The King Who Would Be Man
by Alara Rogers
Summary: After reforming, Discord has been living with Fluttershy. He's established genuine friendships with some of the Mane 6 and has been working on re-connecting with Celestia. But what passes for his "normal" life is about to be disrupted... because the Q Continuum are preparing to hand down their final sentence on him. (NOTE: Re-ordered chapters to add prologue.)
1. Prologue: Family Problems

Fluttershy had given Discord a bedroom. This was utterly ludicrous, of course; he could make a place for himself anywhere he chose, and he didn't sleep anyway, and yet, with Fluttershy asleep and the house boring as mud, somehow he found himself spending time here. Not all his time; he had things to do, he wasn't so pathetic that he needed to spend all his time hovering around this tiny little cottage. But as ridiculous and unnecessary as the gift had been... he found himself strangely moved by the fact that she'd given him one at all. No one gave him gifts.

It was unnerving.

In the beginning he'd let his imagination run riot in the tiny room, inverting and subverting the laws of physics, nature and good taste to the greatest extent he could without making the room fatal to ponies, mostly to try to irritate Fluttershy into throwing him out, which she had never done. Discord was willing to admit how much that impressed him. He wasn't used to being surprised at the outcome of anything, or losing any game he chose to play, and this particular defeat at Fluttershy's hands had been both less predictable and had had considerably less annoying long-range results than Twilight Sparkle beating him had. It was a better victory, too. He'd _given_ Fluttershy a real challenge, and she'd still beaten him. Not like the other times. He'd underestimated Sparky and her friends and given them far, far too many chances. Maybe the others were right and he _was_ slipping. First failing to notice that one of the humans he was testing was actually a Betazoid empath, letting what should have been a difficult and challenging test turn into a cakewalk, and then failing again with the humans, underestimating Picard's hold on the one he'd tried to recruit (and possibly underestimating the Continuum's willingness to tolerate the attempt at recruiting new blood in the first place, though really, if they didn't bring in anyone new the place would simply collapse of stagnation... not that that was his problem anymore)... and then flat out giving Sparky and pals a free shot. He was never going to admit this to _anyone_, but... yeah, he was a little worried. The occasional mistake was one thing but this level of screwing things up was new. Maybe the others had a point.

Naah.

He'd let the room go back to mostly normal, now. The truth was he had a much higher tolerance for "normal" than he was ever going to admit to his ponies. This was the place where he got to cut loose, where his role and identity let him push the boundaries of his own whims and imagination in ways he never got to anywhere else, and if they knew how well he could fake "normalcy" in other places and times, they'd know that when he cut loose he was doing it on purpose and not because he couldn't help himself. It wasn't nearly as much of a hardship for him as he pretended it was to _not_ turn the room into a funhouse mirror of every rule in operation on this planet, and it made Fluttershy more comfortable when he made things almost normal, and for some reason that he was deliberately not engaging the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect in trying to understand, he actually cared how the little yellow ball of fluff felt. So at the moment, the room had a bed and a desk and a dresser and a mirror, and he was sitting on a chair in front of the mirror building a hypercube. It was supposed to be a really amazing toy, full of educational traps carefully designed to be non-lethal, chock full of wordplay and clever visual gags, something really amusing he could suck Sparky into exploring for hours or days on end where she'd come out a wiser, smarter, and vastly more annoyed little pony. His heart wasn't in it, though. Sometimes the Muse was just with him, and sometimes it went out to a party and left him at home to mope and think about who he could go bother now. Maybe Luna. Luna had been hilarious to tease the past few days, but he had to keep himself restrained with it or Celestia would get irritated enough to declare him a public enemy again, and while that could be a lot of fun and he'd spent many long hours fantasizing about the marvelously entertaining fights he was planning to get into with the Bearers of the Elements once Fluttershy gave up on him... the fact that she never had kind of spoiled the fantasy. If he backslid and ended up in a fight with the Bearers now it would put him up against Fluttershy and that... didn't actually sound like fun anymore.

Definitely slipping. He'd be the laughingstock of the Continuum if they were watching...

...which, if he didn't mistake what was happening to his mirror, they were trying to.

He turned to the mirror in great irritation, tossing his hypercube into a box and then making the box turn into a smooth, seamless bouncy ball, which bounced away. The image in the mirror was another draconequus, with tan fur on his chest instead of brown and clear blue-grey eyes instead of yellow. "Do you mind?" he snapped at the image. "Last I checked this was still my territory."

"Ooh, fierce," the other said in that _really annoying_ voice that made Discord sincerely wish he could drop-kick his fellows into a black hole as easily as he could put Yar in a penalty box, or dress Celestia in a dancer's costume and force her to escape from a giant cake. "Relax, buddy, I'm not on your turf. Just making a phone call here."

"Yeah, well, I don't recall inviting you to do _that_ either."

"Good thing for me I don't wait for invitations. Nice digs. I see you're not in a palace."

"Not that it's any of your business, but no. They're boring. Been there, done that, sick of it."

"So you're slumming, huh? Heard you got yourself a new pony pal for a roomy. How's she managing to put up with you?"

"I'm sure it's difficult for her to adjust, but my fantastic wit and charm provides some compensation for my zany antics, no doubt. Does this have a point or is this a purely social visit?"

"Oh, you know. Just wanted to look in on you, see how you were doing. Last time I checked up on you here you were a rock."

"Laugh it up, buddy, I'm sure they love you just as much on Deltivia since you lost their asteroid belt."

"You _always_ gotta bring that one up? You must have pulled, like, nine hundred stunts I could use for an example of how annoying you are, and you always bring up that one asteroid belt like it means something."

"In all fairness, it was a pretty enormous example of massive and ludicrous failure on your part."

"Whereas getting turned into a rock again was just good clean fun?"

Discord shrugged. "As you can see, I got better. Now, I have things to do, so unless there's a point to this tedious conversation—"

"Oh, I just had some news to give you, that's all. Figured you might be interested to know, but if you don't care—" The other in the mirror raised his eagle talon, ready to snap.

Discord held up his own paw. "Wait. Are you actually suggesting you might be helpful for once? Because if so, I'm all for it."

The other's grin was predatory. "I just figured I'd call up and let you know not to get too comfortable where you are."

Discord leaned forward into the mirror, scowling. "Exactly what do you mean by that?"

"Just what I said. It's coming to a verdict. Soon."

Despite himself his heart beat faster with a painful mixture of hope and terror. He didn't want to beg, to humble himself in any way before the other one, but... what choice did he have? "So... any hints you willing to drop me on which way the wind is blowing?" he asked, trying painfully hard to sound casual.

The smile on the other draconequus in the mirror grew, turning into a cruel mocking grin. "Just that if you had anything you really, really wanted to get around to doing one of these days, and you've been too busy to get to it so far... you might want to make time within the next year. Or less."

All the blood drained from Discord's head. Which thankfully was a lot less visible in a form with fur, but he knew, humiliated, that the other knew anyway. "A _year_?" he whispered, feeling like he'd been punched in the gut.

"Or less," the other one said. "'Course, maybe the outcome won't go the way it's leaning now... but me, I wouldn't bet on it."

And then the mirror cleared, and Discord's own reflection was all that was visible in it again. He sagged down into the chair.

A year. Or less. Right after he'd found friends among these mortals, begun to make a new home for himself.

Well. Wasn't that ironic.

He started to chuckle, because bitter irony was funny no matter whose life it destroyed, and he'd be a terrible hypocrite if he couldn't find the humor in his own misfortune. And then he took a deep breath, and got to his feet again, staring at himself in the mirror.

This changed nothing. He'd already decided, he wanted these ponies to accept him as a friend. For some reason. Maybe because somewhere in the back of his mind he'd known all along the verdict wasn't likely to go in his favor. And because Picard had said no, and he had to have _somewhere_ to go, and being the bad guy hadn't been nearly as much fun as he'd remembered it being from a thousand years ago.

Nothing was certain except that his older brother was an ass and would enjoy twisting the knife, after the number of times he'd warned Discord something like this might happen. Discord privately thought the other one was actually on his side, defending him to the others, but he knew better than to think the other would ever admit that to _him_. Maybe it wasn't going to go badly. Maybe it wasn't going to come as quickly as his brother was suggesting. Nothing was actually any different than it had been ten minutes ago.

He wasn't going to let the news ruin his time with his new friends. Especially if the news really _was_ as bad as it sounded, and the time he had was a lot less than he'd thought he'd get.


	2. A Day In The Life

_Notes: As with any of my MLP fics, Discord is Q. This one's explicitly a crossover, but don't expect the TNG folks to appear except at a distance in scenes straight out of "Deja Q". The story is basically the events immediately prior to and during the TNG episode "Deja Q" from the perspective of Discord's pony friends and acquaintances._

* * *

One of Fluttershy's cabinets was knocking.

At this point she wasn't particularly fazed by things like that. It could be that one of the animals had snuck in and then been unable to get back out, or it could be Discord trying to use her cabinet for a door. She walked over and pulled it open.

Pinkie Pie stuck her head through. "WHERE IS DISCORD?"

Fluttershy blinked. "Has he done something bad?"

"Yeah, he's hiding too well! How are we gonna play Hide and Go Seek if he's gonna hide this well?" Pinkie pulled herself out of the cabinet. "My Pinkie Sense tells me he's around here _somewhere_."

Fluttershy had stopped trying to play Hide and Go Seek with Discord a month ago for pretty much exactly this reason; she'd play all sorts of ridiculous games she'd never heard of before, including Fizzbin, Donkey Pong, Moebius Race, and whatever that game had been where the whole world had turned into little squares and she had to dig things out of the ground to use to build some kind of machine that fired portals that let her go back to the real world, but nobody but Pinkie Pie was random enough to ever find Discord in a game of Hide and Go Seek. She enjoyed watching them play, most of the time, when Pinkie wasn't walking through her cupboard. "Oh, dear, is that a hoofprint on my tea cup?"

"Oh, I'm totally sorry, I _promise_ I will clean up any tea cups I accidentally stepped on, or near, or however I got a hoofprint on it, which was probably due to the flour all over my feet so I'm really sorry about that. I will be your dishwashing buddy for a week! After I find Discord."

"That's flour? It's purple."

"Yeah! Purple flour is the best for baking grape flavored cupcakes. If you actually bake a grape into a cupcake it doesn't work because grapes are too squishy, but if you use dried grapes that's a raisin so it's not even a grape, not that raisins in cupcakes aren't awesome but they're not _grapes_, so when I told Discord that it's no fun to just snap cupcakes into existence _all_ the time because sometimes it's nice to just bake them and he didn't believe me so I made him help me bake a cupcake and he said white flour was boring so he made me some grape flour and it is _awesome!_ Best cupcakes ever. Well, best cupcakes this week, anyway." She was peering inside jars, teapots and the salt shaker. "So I am almost willing to forgive him for the fruit salad but only almost! I have to yell at him first but before that I have to find him. I am _totally_ sure he's in your kitchen somewhere, Fluttershy. You're not using your oven, are you?"

"No..."

"Ok, good, because I don't think the oven being on could really hurt him but who knows!" She opened the oven door. "Wait, no, not there. Oh _wait_, I know, I gotcha!" She ran over to where Fluttershy kept the sugar bowl and pulled the lid off.

There was no sugar inside. Instead, there was a very tiny Discord. "Oh, Pinkie. You got me _again!_ Will I ever defeat your amazing prowess at Hide and Go Seek?"

"You find me all the time too. And _where_ is all Fluttershy's sugar, mister? Did you eat it all up on her, huh? Did you? Because she and I will _totally_ make you go to the dentist if you're gonna eat whole sugar bowls full of sugar!"

"Of course I didn't eat it... all. Remember when I told you two that I was out annoying spiders?"

"Uh... yeah..." Fluttershy said.

"Well, you cannot _imagine_ how annoying spiders find it when they find a nice juicy fly in their web and then, dear me, it turns out to be _made of sugar."_

"That's not very nice," Fluttershy said. "Spiders can't eat sugar." She considered what he'd told her the last time he'd told her he was annoying spiders. "Or chocolate pudding."

"How are they going to know until they try it? I thought spiders might enjoy the opportunity to sample a pudding-filled fly." Discord vanished out of the sugar bowl and reappeared in the kitchen at full size. "Besides, would you rather I go annoy ponies, or spiders?"

"Spiders, " Pinkie said. "Definitely spiders."

"Why do you have to annoy anypony?"

"My dear, if I don't go annoying _something_, they'll take away my Disharmony Card and then where will I be?"

"What's a Disharmony Card?"

"It's like a library card, except that instead of checking out books it allows me to check out chaos. Which reminds me, some of what I've got is overdue and I'm going to have to return it before I can check out any more."

"You are _not_ going to go drop off overdue chaos until I have had words with you, mister!" Pinkie said. "What were you _thinking_, covering my entire bedroom with fruit salad?"

"...That you like fruit?"

"But there was _no pineapple!_ Not even one teensy little bit of pineapple! How can you even call that a fruit salad when there's no pineapple in it?"

Discord considered. "I could call it a chaotic fruit salad."

"No, covering my bedroom in it made it a chaotic fruit salad! Leaving out the pineapple just made it totally _YUCKY!_ I'll tolerate all kinds of chaotic fruit salads, buddy, but you make me eat a yucky fruit salad one more time and it is gonna be _ON._"

"I didn't make you eat the salad."

"Yes you did! You knew that if you covered my bedroom in fruit salad I would have to eat it even if you didn't put any pineapple in it! And besides you fed all of Fluttershy's sugar to _spiders_ and they don't even like sugar! You better say you're sorry, buster."

"You're sorry, buster," Discord said promptly.

"Yeah, and say it like you mean it or I will never make you another cupcake all day!"

Discord rolled his eyes. Metaphorically. Fluttershy had seen him do it literally once too often and had finally admitted to him that it creeped her out. "Oh, the horror," he said. "Fine. I am sorry for the lack of pineapple in your salad and the next time I fill a random location in your home with fruit salad I will be _certain_ to make sure there is pineapple."

"Oh! And also those bright red mariachi cherries!"

"Maraschino cherries?" Fluttershy asked, surprised that the queen of dessert would get that wrong.

"No, mariachi cherries. Like they blow horns! And they've got maracas!"

"Yes, yes, mea culpa, I will make sure the next pineapple salad has mariachi cherries in it. Although now that you're expecting them, I'll just have to do my best to make sure you're _not_ expecting them when they show up."

"I wouldn't expect a bunch of mariachi cherries to appear right here on Fluttershy's counter and dance around until I eat them all," Pinkie Pie said, with a hopeful note in her voice.

"And nor should you! Because we were just talking about them, so that would make sense, and when do I ever make sense? Besides which your cupcakes are burning."

"Oh _no!_ Yikes! I totally forgot I left them in the oven! Bye, Fluttershy! Bye, Discord! Bye, everybody else!" She jumped back in the cabinet and the cabinet door slammed.

"Discord, it's ok about the sugar but you should have told me I was out because I might have wanted to make some tea."

Discord sighed. "You're not out of sugar. I put it in the pepper shaker."

"In the... so where is the pepper?"

"Well, you're out of _that_, because I ate it." He stuck his head in the cabinet. "Oh, Pinkie Pie, I feel just terrible about your cupcakes burning. Do you want me to fix them for you?"

Fluttershy couldn't hear any response, which was normal, because his head was inside a cabinet and there was actually no visible opening inside it that might lead to Pinkie Pie's kitchen, but he said, cheerfully, "Done! No problem at all," and pulled his head back out. "There we go. Cupcakes are saved! How would you like to go scuba diving, Fluttershy?"

"Uh, maybe, but not really right now and if we go I don't want to do it so close to nightfall and I don't want it to be on the bottom of the ocean with all those giant sea serpents even if some of them _are_ really nice once you get to know them?"

"Okay, then how about—"

They were interrupted by Pinkie Pie sticking her head back out of the cabinet. "DISCORD! I made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla pudding filling and cherries and you made them into chocolate cupcakes with mustard filling and _OLIVES!_ And that is totally gross!"

"... No one would have eaten a burned cupcake anyway. And how do you know they're gross unless you try them?"

"How do you think I know they're gross? I _DID!_ Yuck!"

"Well, if you don't like my culinary masterpiece you can always give it to me."

She glared at him. "This is not my cupcake. This is the Cakes' cupcake. I have to _sell_ these things. For bits. Do you have any bits?"

"I don't understand why you ponies are so obsessed with tiny little pieces of metal. I can make tiny little pieces of metal any time I want!"

"Yeah, but Celestia won't let you make _bits_."

"Spoilsport princess. She says it would crash the economy. The economy ran just _fine_ when I used to make money rain out of trees."

"So what you're telling me is you don't have any bits to buy these nasty mustard olive cupcakes off me."

Fluttershy sighed. "I'll buy the cupcakes for him, Pinkie."

"Oh no! You don't have to do that. You should make him do some work to earn bits or something."

"Do you remember the time he went to your house because he said he forgot his hat, and then you two came back and you'd been to Neighpon and you were raving about rice balls with red bean paste?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Well, right before he left for your house he enchanted a broom and a mop to clean the house for me because I told him to clean the house, but after they were done they started chasing Angel and a bunch of other animals around and trying to sweep _them_ up like they were part of the mess, and I had to get Twilight Sparkle to fix it for me because you guys were so late getting back."

"In my defense, I am a spirit of _chaos_. Not housecleaning."

"Well, you are also obviously a spirit of nasty mustard filled cupcakes and so I'm not gonna give you any! I'm gonna save them for a prank. Thanks, bye!"

Discord flopped down on a cloud that was suddenly sitting in the kitchen. Though at least it was a normal cloud, not a cotton candy one. "I never thought I'd say this, but that little pony can tire _me_ out. I am all out of chaos for at least the next twenty minutes. Want to play a game?"

"I was actually coming in to make dinner..."

"Oh, Fluttershy. Didn't you make a schedule that says it's _my_ turn to make dinner?" He snapped his fingers and the table was suddenly set with plates of heaping, delicious-smelling spaghetti. That happened to be green, with peanut-butter-colored sauce that probably wasn't actually peanut butter. Probably. It smelled like alfredo sauce, actually.

"I did make a schedule but it was my turn today. Yours was tomorrow."

He shrugged. "I have such difficulty keeping track of time. Try my spaghetti!"

Tentatively Fluttershy did. "It's... it's actually really yummy. Do I want to know what's in it?"

Discord grinned. "Can you keep a secret, dear Fluttershy?"

"Uh... yes..."

He leaned in and whispered in her ear. "It's not chaotic at all, it just looks that way. That's spinach fettucine and spicy peanut sauce with a lot of cheese mixed in. You could buy the ingredients at a fancy-schmancy grocery shop in Canterlot if you wanted to."

She giggled. "That's... pretty funny. I would never have expected you could really make green spaghetti with peanut butter sauce that smells like cheese without using magic to make the ingredients."

"That is my entire purpose in existence. To do things that nobody would expect. You see –" He snapped his fingers, and a group of brightly shining red cherries appeared on the table, playing horns. "No one ever expects the mariachi cherries _after_ Pinkie Pie goes home."

Angel Bunny sniffed experimentally at his plate, then pulled out a piece of carrot and displayed it at Discord, a questioning look on his face.

Discord shrugged. "I'm in a generous mood, little bunny. Enjoy it while it lasts."

"You... made Angel Bunny his own special spaghetti? With carrots? That is so _sweet!_" Fluttershy hugged him, causing Discord to recoil, an exaggerated expression of distaste on his face.

"Please, Fluttershy, I was _using_ that pancreas."

She nuzzled her nose against his chest, largely because he was sufficiently tall that even when he was sitting down on a cloud, she couldn't easily reach his face unless he bent it down to her. "Oh, you complain and complain but you like it when I hug you, really."

"Well, maybe I would like it if the sugar overload weren't killing me."

"Like the guy who makes _cotton candy clouds_ doesn't like sugar?"

"Well..."

She released him. There was a fine line to walk with Discord, and she'd figured it out after spending time with him. He really did like affection and friendship, but he really did think they were weaknesses and that admitting to liking them would make people look down on him, or something, so she couldn't give him too much. Just enough to make him both pleased and embarrassed, and then she could pretend she was embarrassing him on purpose like it was a prank so he could pretend his emotions weren't as affected as they actually were. Over time, she thought, she might be able to get him to actually _admit_ to liking it. And then he'd be well on his way to being able to make more friends besides just her. Already he and Pinkie Pie were great buddies, and both Twilight Sparkle and Rarity treated him as a sort of frenemy, Rarity engaging him in arguments about fashion every time they ran into each other (according to Rarity, Discord's taste was absolutely appalling but it couldn't be denied that he had a powerful sense of style) and Twilight Sparkle... well, it was really hard to describe exactly how that relationship worked, except that they were always getting into low-stakes magical battles of a weird kind where Discord would cast some sort of spell out of one of Twilight's books, except he'd make major modifications to it so she wouldn't easily be able to figure out which one, and challenge her to figure out how to undo it. And Twilight seemed infuriated by this behavior but she always played along.

She thought he might be making friends with Princess Luna as well – he didn't sleep, so he usually went out at night while Fluttershy was sleeping, and when he wasn't annoying spiders or going deep into the Everfree Forest to find a woodchuck so he could learn how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if he bespelled it so it could chuck wood (at his head, apparently, and she was pretty sure he had deliberately held off on healing it so she would put ice and a bandage on it for him, but on the other hand, things in the Everfree were pretty impervious to magic so maybe the amount of chaos magic it had taken to make a woodchuck chuck wood had also made it capable of actually hurting a god of chaos with the wood it chucked at his head), he was teleporting to Canterlot to talk to Luna. Or so he said, but she believed him because it would be just too easy to check on. Applejack and Rainbow Dash still couldn't stand him and neither could Spike and he and Princess Celestia seemed to have some sort of weird old thing between them that made the two of them avoid each other, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders had started treating him as some kind of weird fun uncle, possibly accepting him as Not Evil so they could stop feeling guilty about accidentally releasing him the first time.

As she nibbled at her surprisingly tasty spaghetti, Fluttershy watched Discord eat his. His plate was actually covered in just one single, incredibly long, strand of spaghetti, which he slurped up in a single prolonged slurp, and then his plate started unraveling as if it, too, was made of the same one strand of spaghetti and he slurped it up as well. She grinned. It wasn't like he never did anything inappropriate or seriously annoying, and he made messes all the time and never cleaned them up and when he tried it just made matters worse, but he was funny and entertaining and surprisingly considerate when he wanted to be. She'd taken on befriending him as a challenge from Princess Celestia, and when she'd first declared him to be her friend it was really more like she'd been trying hard to find things about him to like than that she'd actually liked him... but she knew a lot about taming scary animals. If you kept treating animals, or ponies (or, she guessed, draconequii if that was really how you pronounced the plural), like they were your friends, if you kept acting like you liked them and wanted to be nice to them, they would almost always come around to returning the favor. Unless they were very hungry, in which case they might try to eat you. Which didn't apply to Discord because he didn't eat ponies.

At this point the door slammed open and Twilight Sparkle stomped in. "DISCORD!"

"_Sparky!_ How about a hug?"

"I'm sorry for disturbing your dinner, Fluttershy, but I have to talk to this—this—"

"Incredibly handsome devil?"

"Devil, I'll agree with," Twilight snapped, and slammed a book down on the dinner table. "The spell you said was in here is not _anywhere_ in this book! You lied to me!"

"I'm hurt, Sparky. Would I ever lie to you... unless it was funnier that way? Which, for the record, it isn't, because the fact that you cannot find that spell in the spellbook I got it out of just yesterday is _COMPLETELY HILARIOUS._"

"The only thing even remotely like the spell you did is the one that _ends_ a transformation, with true love's kiss, and I know for a fact you would never, ever use a spell that requires true love's kiss."

"I did tell you I modified it just a bit."

She stomped over to him. "You _did_ lie to me! There's _nothing_ in this book that could be modified to turn ponies into dogs!"

"Yes, because the youthful unicorn student of magic is _positive_ to have every bit as much experience with modifying spells as the ETERNAL GOD OF CHAOS." Discord leaned back on his cloud and sipped at a chocolate milk that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Would you like to try this again from the top?"

"This is serious, Discord! I'm done jumping through your little riddles. Turn the Cutie Mark Crusaders back into ponies or so help you _I'm_ going to modify a transmogrification spell so it uses just five Elements of Harmony and ends up with a cake instead of a statue, and then I'm going to _eat_ it."

Discord clapped his hands. "Wonderful, Sparky, wonderful! We'll make a Chaos mage of you yet, just you wait!" He leaned forward. "Or, possibly, you're on the verge of turning into _The Terrible Doctor Twilight?_"

Twilight glared at him, but before she could say anything, Fluttershy whispered, horrified, "You... turned the Cutie Mark Crusaders into _dogs_, Discord?"

"Oh, relax, they're having a blast. Maybe they'll get cutie marks in being dogs—" He fell backward off the couch as Fluttershy shoved him through the cloud, and tumbled onto the floor backwards. "Hey, that was uncalled for!"

Fluttershy directed The Stare at him. "Turn. Them. BACK."

"Can't. They did it to themselves. But Twilight Sparklepie here can do it! The spell's right here in this book!" As The Stare continued, Discord sighed. "Fluttershy, they can talk. They've still got wings and horns and blank flanks and annoying little voices and all the other things they normally have, they're just puppies instead of fillies. And they really did do it to themselves. I provided them with the spell, I told them it would turn them into puppies, and they quite voluntarily and eagerly activated it."

"They told me they had no idea how you did this to them!" Twilight snapped.

"Well, would _you_ tell your older sister's good pal and the protégé of Princess Celestia that you took a spell off the Spirit of Chaos and activated it because you wanted to see if you could get your cutie mark if you turned into a dog for a little while?" He got back to his feet. "They're not hurt. And if you _must_ know, the spell will wear off on its own, eventually, so if you _really_ insist on declaring defeat and throwing yourself at me in abject surrender declaring, 'Oh, Discord, great Lord of Chaos, I am obviously a complete idiot and totally unable to solve the simplest of magical problems, _please_ solve all my problems for me by telling me the answer so Great Princess Celestia doesn't realize what a total nitwit I am—'"

Twilight lowered her horn at him. "Cake, Discord. I even know the spell to use."

"Marvelous, I always wanted to be a cake. So much fluffier than a giant stone statue."

"I'm serious."

"You're always serious. You wouldn't be Twilight Sparkypoo if you weren't serious." He leaned forward. "Fine. Do we need a wittle wesson in wogic, Sparkypants?"

"A lesson in logic from _you?_"

"Yes, what _is_ this world coming to. Cats and dogs living together! The spirit of Chaos having a better comprehension of what makes sense than the Terrible Doctor Twilight! I—"

"_Never_ call me that again, Discord. I am completely serious about this. You know that a spell that traps a pony in an illusion is dark magic, right? And you know I never told the Princess about that book, and what you did to me with it?"

"Technically that thing was a friendship spell."

"A friendship spell and a fear spell and you twisted them all together and you made it dark. I don't think the Princess would be impressed by your technicalities."

It had been a month ago. Twilight had been gloating at Discord that she'd found a book he'd missed eating the reforming spell out of, and if he didn't watch his step, she had it memorized now. Discord had appeared quite alarmed, and had given her a book which he claimed would tell her about the many issues with reforming spells. What it had actually been had been a spell which forced a pony to relive their own life as if it had been another pony's... not to live _that_ pony's life, but to suffer the same kinds of events that that pony had. So if the spell caster was an orphan, the reader of the book would live through an illusion in which their own parents died. If the spell caster had had a turbulent marriage, the reader of the book would see their own special somepony in the role of the spouse. And if the spell caster was the spirit of Chaos...

It had been a horrible nightmare for Twilight. From what she'd told them all about it, the story—which she'd had to live through as if it were actually happening – had been about her growing up in a world where no one trusted books or knowledge, and everyone hated and feared her for her love of those things, and when she made mistakes with the spells that she'd learned from books, her family and friends and even Princess Celestia had turned on her and ostracized her horribly. Surrounded by people calling her evil for the thing she loved, the thing she lived for, she had turned evil, becoming a madmare who experimented on other ponies in horrible ways in her quest to learn forbidden magics. She'd taken over the kingdom, ruled it with an iron hoof, brought death and destruction in her quest for knowledge, and been taken down by her best friends, turned to stone, with Celestia wielding the Element of Magic instead of her. Maddened by centuries in stone, she'd been even crazier when she'd gotten out, and unleashed horrors against Equestria, until the now-adult Cutie Mark Crusaders had used a reforming spell on her, which had made her hate books and knowledge and turn against everything she'd ever loved. Except that the lying happiness that the spell imposed on her was only a veneer, and every so often her true self got free enough to see what she'd become, the complete opposite of what she had been, the thing she had loved most in life and defined herself by torn out and replaced with a fake devotion to others that left her utterly hollow, and one day she got free long enough to kill herself.

The spell hadn't just been based on rewriting the spellcaster's life experiences so that the book's reader would live through them as if it happened to them, with friends and hobbies and talents replaced by what matched the reader's life. It finished off by bringing the _spellcaster's_ worst fear to life and integrating it into the reader's nightmare.

Twilight had cried for days afterward, and some of the others, particularly Rainbow Dash and Applejack, had thought that the very fact that Discord would trick her into experiencing that spell meant that she _should_ use the reforming spell... but it had, in fact, worked as Discord had intended. It had taken his life experiences, and his greatest fear, and translated them into terms that Twilight Sparkle could relate to, and made her experience them so she would understand why no attempt to actually reform him could work if the threat of a reforming spell was on the table, anywhere. It had upset her so badly that Fluttershy had had a screaming match with Discord about what he'd done to Twilight... but in the end, Twilight had explained, she couldn't even hate him for it, because the illusion he'd made her live through was her version of exactly what he _had_ lived through, followed by the thing she had threatened him with. He hadn't done anything to her that he hadn't endured himself... except for the horrible ending, which was exactly what she'd just threatened to do to him.

Also, because the book had had enough logical inconsistencies that she'd been able to suspend her belief in it enough to maintain her sanity. Such as, how could the Cutie Mark Crusaders have possibly survived several hundred years to be around to cast the reforming spell when the Terrible Doctor Twilight was released from her stone prison?

That was how Twilight and Discord had begun their strange competition. Discord had told Twilight that the spell he'd tricked her into triggering was in one of her own books, and he'd even given her which book it was, and she'd had to figure out what modifications he'd made to it. It turned out that the spell had started life as a friendship spell where you could bespell a book with your own memories and give it to a friend to experience, plus a spell that was supposed to draw out the target's _own_ worst fear so that friends could see it and understand it and help the target deal with it. Twilight had known that particular one could be weaponized, despite being in a manual of friendship spells, but it had taken her two days of studying what Discord had done to combine the two spells to figure out how he'd made them both into a weapon. Discord didn't usually use procedural magic, the kind one could learn from books, but his natural magic didn't lend itself well to producing well-organized, consistent effects, so when he actually _wanted_ a consistent result he'd grab a spell out of a book and then completely rewrite it so it did what he wanted it to do... and picking apart his spells, figuring out how he'd made his modifications and why, was teaching Twilight a lot about magic that she'd never managed to get from either books or Celestia's tutoring. So he kept playing elaborate pranks on her with modified spells – none as devastating as The Tale of the Terrible Doctor Twilight had been, but then, he'd done that one in self-defense to protect himself from the thing he feared most in all the world – and she kept rising to the challenge, angrily.

This did not, in Fluttershy's opinion, justify turning the Cutie Mark Crusaders into puppies, even if they had wanted to be turned into puppies. "Discord, what you've done is really frightening Twilight and upsetting her," she said sternly. "She's afraid that if she can't figure out what spell you used, she can't counter it, so what if they get stuck that way?"

"They won't get stuck. I am _not_ a fan of getting stuck. Trust me. Would this face lie to you?"

"Yes," Twilight said.

"Well, then I guess it is, indeed, time for our logic lesson." He stood up, suddenly wearing a tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses, pointing at a chalkboard that hadn't been there a moment ago with a long wooden pointer that also hadn't. As he spoke in a strange accent, chalk wrote on the board, by itself. "Let us propose, there are two possibilities here. One, Discord is lying, and the spell isn't in the book. Two, Discord is telling the truth. So, if the first possibility is true, this leads to the possible consequence that Twilight Sparkle will successfully persuade Fluttershy to use the Element of Kindness in concert with her pals, which would be deeply unpleasant for Discord, plus, how would that even be funny? I mean, 'It's in the book, except it's really not! Haha, what a knee slapper!' How _jejune_. No style at all! Whereas if the second possibility is true, again we have a fork in possibility! First, the possibility that Twilight Sparkle is too stupid to possibly figure out the correct spell! In which case the Princess Celestia would look like an utter maroon for choosing such an idiotic protégé, wouldn't she, and we wouldn't want to diss the Princess. Plus, since Twilight Sparkle successfully _defeated_ the great and powerful Discord, we can logically assume that either she is very smart or that Discord is an idiot and I am _quite_ certain none of us want to go there, no?"

"Maybe not so many insults if you're trying to explain something to someone who's mad at you?" Fluttershy said, looking at the expression on Twilight Sparkle's face with some trepidation on Discord's behalf.

"What would be the fun in that? Besides, I didn't insult the dear Sparklypin, quite the contrary! I said rather that her great intelligence and ability to solve this puzzle can be assumed from the fact that if she doesn't have such abilities, both Celestia and I are idiots and I would certainly never want to say that. Well, maybe the part about Celestia, but not _moi._ So! If I am telling the truth and the spell is in this book, and Twilight Sparkle is smart enough to figure it out, and yet she has _not_ figured it out because she is convinced that there's only one spell in there that it could possibly be and that's the wrong one, once again we have two possibilities! I love statistics. Did you know that statistically, if you flip a coin 7,212 times, and each time it comes up heads, then the odds of it coming up heads again are still fifty-fifty? But I digress! Either the spell is the one Twilight Sparkle thinks it might be, and whatever she sees as the impediment to the possibility is in fact no impediment at all and she just needs to look at it from a different angle. Or, it's a different spell and Twilight just hasn't figured out which one yet." He leaned forward into Twilight's face. "Which means, it's there in the book, Sparky. Figure it _out_."

Twilight glared at him even harder. "The only spell that it could _possibly_ be by any stretch of the imagination is the one that undoes a transformation by true love's kiss. Firstly, this was a transformation, not an undoing of a transformation, and secondly, there is no way you would cast a spell that had true love's kiss involved, and besides, they're _fillies_, they're way too young for true love."

"You're forgetting something," Discord caroled.

"No, no, I'm not. You modified it. I _know_ that. But I looked at your actual spell, not just the result, and I deconstructed some of the magical pattern, and it's definitely a transformation."

"Well, that's the interesting thing about undoing a transformation," Discord said. "Technically, undoing a transformation _is_ a transformation. And under _most_ circumstances, true love's kiss is typically coming from a member of one's original species. I mean, it's theoretically possible that when the beautiful pony princess kisses the transformed frog prince, and he returns to his true self, he _might_ just be a giant chicken, and let me just add that that is a fantastic idea and oh, if only I weren't reformed I would _love_ to bespell a giant chicken into a frog, particularly the prince of the giant chickens, but what was I talking about again? Oh yes! How often does that actually happen? Isn't it the case that _generally_, one's—" he made a gagging expression—"_special somepony_ is, well, a _pony?_ And not a giant chicken? Although that really ought to happen more often than it does."

"Ohhh." Twilight had lost the glare, her eyes going wide. "Oh, so if it's a transformation spell it doesn't work by undoing the original spell, it turns you into whatever it is your true love is... which is usually what you are too, so... that's kind of a cheap shortcut, but it would work 90% of the time, and then if you modified _that_... but where does true love's kiss come in?"

"Define your terms." Discord shrugged. "Rumor has it that most ponies just _love_ puppies..."

"Oh – of course! If you're talking about a 'true love', meaning a love that isn't false, rather than 'true love' as in 'one true love', then it could be any kind of love! And puppies love everypony! Well, everypony that's nice to them, but Scoot and Sweetie Belle and Applebloom love puppies too, so if it's a kiss from a _puppy_... which is to say, a lick from a puppy, because that's how dogs show love... oh, I see what you did there. Uh-huh. You put the spell on them and told them it would be activated if a puppy kissed them and they went and found a puppy and got it to lick them."

"It was more than one puppy, if you must know."

"So how do we undo it? That tells me how you did it, but if we used the exact same spell in its unmodified form to turn them back into ponies it might have a bad reaction to the modified spell, so I need a spell that can actually _undo_ your spell. How do I unravel it?"

"Excuse me, I'm sorry. You seem to have mistaken me for 'Mr. Easy Answers' or perhaps 'Mr. Gives The Whole Game Away.' I'm actually Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony! Pleased to meet you."

This brought the glare back. Fluttershy turned her own Look on Discord. "Discord. Give her some help, _please_."

"Oh all right." Discord plopped himself down on his cloud couch again. "How do you undo a thing you've done?"

"You do what you did, but backwards."

Discord pulled an exaggeratedly horrified face. "That's _disgusting_, Twilight, they are _fillies!_ Oh, I thought better of you. Wait till Celestia finds out how perverse you are!"

"What are you talking about?" Twilight demanded.

"Well, I can only think of a few ways to perform a kiss _backward_..."

The book on the table flew up and hit Discord in the nose as Twilight turned bright red. "That is not what I meant! Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"_My_ mind? _I_ am not the one who suggested that innocent young fillies might engage in some _backward kissing_. Really, Twilight—"

"Discord!" Fluttershy snapped.

"Your friend is an utter pervert, Flutterling, for _shame_—"

This time Fluttershy picked up the book with her hoof and bonked Discord on the head with it. "Discord. Help. Her."

"If you insist," he said, grinning broadly. "Sparklepire, two roads diverge in a yellow wood. You take the one less traveled by, by which I mean to say the left one but actually you ought to have gone right. How do you fix it?"

"You go back – and _no_, I am not suggesting anything perverse! You're the one making these analogies-"

"Fine, fine, the yellow wood was the wrong analogy. Suppose you're on one of those horrible gridlike rectangular blocks you find all over Manehattan and you've taken a left turn and it's one way, so you can't go back. How do you go the other way?"

"You take three left turns and that brings you back to the beginning," Twilight said slowly.

"Excellent. _Wonderful_. Now go someplace. Poor Fluttershy here was trying to eat her dinner before you so rudely interrupted."

"So they have to receive three kisses from a pony that loves them?"

Discord rolled his eyes (metaphorically again.) "It's an _analogy_, Twilight. Not necessarily three turns—but you know what, you're on the right track. Now go run along and solve the thing before I decide to give you a _really_ challenging one."

She took a deep breath. "All right. But if I can't get them turned back into ponies by nightfall, you are in trouble." The door didn't exactly slam when she left, but it was close.


	3. Show You The World In My Eyes

Fluttershy looked hard at Discord. "What were you _thinking_? You can't turn children into puppies! Even if they want to be puppies!"

"Whyever not? One time in the old days, I dropped in on a class full of them and took them with me to explore an ant hill, and a coral reef, and the moon, and they loved it. It was a delightful science lesson that permanently imprinted on their little minds vitally important information like how boring anthills would be if you had to live there, and all of them were utterly thrilled. Well, except for the little orange colt with the ridiculously curly mane who kept whining. If I recall correctly his name was Carrot or something like that but he really struck me as more of an Arnold so that's what I called him."

"Well, ok, maybe they did have fun, but how did their parents feel about it?"

"Who cares? I was there for the children. Children are so delightfully chaotic, Flutterbug, they actually _enjoy_ my games. Well, as long as their misguided parents haven't taught them to run away screaming as soon as they see me, but I would never harm a child. They're far too much fun." He grinned. "Your little pals will return to pony form when the moon rises, or Twilight frees them, whichever comes first. I told them when I gave them the spell that I could undo it or Princess Luna could any time they wanted to get out of it, and that it would only last until nightfall in any case, but that they weren't to tell their Aunt Twilight that because we were playing a wonderful prank on her and I had permission from Princess Celestia."

Fluttershy looked at him askance. "You seriously had permission from Princess Celestia?" she asked skeptically.

"Some time ago Celestia asked me to offer her student my advice and guidance in her magic studies. Which of course was perfectly appropriate, because I am approximately several hundred times more knowledgeable about how magic works than Celestia and Luna put together, and besides, Sparky is just so much _fun_ to tease. She's so serious! Don't you just want to chuck her under her little chin, and pinch her cheeks, and turn her mane vermilion and neon green polka dotted?"

"I thought you didn't like her."

"Perish the thought! I _love_ my little Sparkiepoo! Why, when she gets that 'grr' face on like she seriously does want to turn me into a cake and eat me, it is so _adorable!_ Reminds me of Celestia. Or... actually, it reminds me of quite a few overly serious, pompous, stuffed shirt, nauseatingly _noble_ and _ethical_ creatures I've met in my life... you know, I can never resist that type. Something about the absolute certainty of somepony's own righteousness... they're just irresistable. I absolutely _have_ to come in and shake up their whole worldview. Puncture their balloon of smug superiority and pie them in the face, as it were." He sighed. "Of course, they're never nearly as interested in me as I am in them, so I'd imagine Twilight doesn't like _me_ very much, but she voluntarily seeks me out and asks for my help, which is better than... I usually get."

"Did Princess Celestia really tell you you could turn fillies into puppies as a test for Twilight?"

"Well, no, but Celestia knows perfectly well I don't perform when I'm micro-managed, so we actually haven't discussed the content of my exercises for Twilight at all. But really! The fillies wanted to try being puppies, _I_ wanted to turn them into puppies, Twilight wants to learn how to really analyze and take apart hostile magic, Celestia wants me to teach her without actually _fighting_ her, it's win-win all around! A bit of harmless chaos, fun for everyone, and it all goes back to normal at nighttime even if Sparkleberry can't figure out my spell, which, really, she should not have needed anywhere near so many hints to do. Maybe the poor dear's under too much stress. Celestia can be quite a slave driver, you know."

Fluttershy sighed. The mariachi cherries, which had gone silent while Twilight was here, picked up a peppy tune again. "Just... be careful, okay? Doing that kind of thing is, I mean I guess it's okay if no one is getting hurt and the kids agree to it, but it's so upsetting when anything seems like it might even be a little bit threatening to foals, so you've got to be careful so ponies don't get really, really mad at you."

He sighed. "I suppose if I'm trying to be reformed, I have to actually care if ponies get really, really mad at me?"

"Yes. You do." She cleared her own plate and Angel Bunny's, since Discord had eaten his.

"Oh, don't do your tedious washing up _now_, Fluttershy. I've been asking all day if we can play a game!"

"How about I save the washing up for later and we talk for a little while? I'm not feeling much like playing a game right now."

"Ugh, talking? Haven't we been talking all day?"

"It's just..." She sat down next to him again. "I've known you for a couple of months, but I really don't know anything about you. I've made a couple of guesses, but who knows if they're right or wrong? So... I'd like to learn more about you."

"I'm the god of chaos. What's more to know?"

"No, you're not," Fluttershy said. "Well, I mean, maybe yes you are, but it's not like... it's not like you're not _somepony_. With a history, and thoughts and feelings of your own. I mean, you're immortal, you can do pretty much anything, you like to cause chaos, but... there's a lot more to learn about somepony than their hobbies and abilities."

"I suppose."

"Like, I didn't know you liked children! You never like things that are cute."

"Oh, I don't like children because they're _cute_, Fluttershy. I like them because they are tiny little monstrous balls of pure concentrated chaos that all the _rest_ of you think are cute. Why, you voluntarily give birth to them, and feed them, and let them live in your houses, when in fact they are almost as good as I am at causing disharmony, radical personality changes and total nonsensical chaos and they don't even need magic to do it. Of course, you folks usually spend all your time trying to knock that out of them and make them grow up into staid, stable, _boring_ members of society, but at least while they are little they will do things like make a pie out of mud and then try to eat it, or draw all over the walls, or cover themselves completely with foal powder and then remove their diapers on the floor and run naked through their parents' dinner party. And as I said earlier, they generally appreciate my talents far more than their parents do. Admittedly, they're complete idiots, but you can't have everything."

"I guess they can be pretty chaotic sometimes."

"Sometimes? Try _all_ the time! You remember that little stunt I pulled on you and your friends, well, of course you do. But that trick doesn't work on children, and do you know why? They're much too chaotic for my magic to be able to make them into the opposite of what they are, because that's going to happen _anyway_. Take the sweetest, most loving baby filly you can imagine. Now deprive her of her nap, and you'll have a shrieking banshee on your hands who hates everyone. Or, imagine the nastiest little bully you've ever met, some bad little colt who sticks fillies' manes in inkwells and shakes down littler foals for their lunch bits and ties cans to dogs' tails. Let the right stallion come along to play a game of kickball with him and take him out for ice cream, and he'll magically transform into an adorable little sweetheart doting on his daddy figure. The very nature of children is that their nature constantly changes."

"I never really thought of it that way," Fluttershy said.

"I'm surprised you didn't, after it was the Cutie Mark Crusaders that let me out of that dreadful statue the first time." He leaned back against the cloud, tipping his head upside down over the side, as a glass of chocolate milk manifested in midair, tipped over and poured its contents down his now-open mouth. As soon as the glass was empty, it sprouted butterfly wings and flew off. "Want some?"

"Maybe later."

"You're missing out." He sat back up. "And the best part about children, the absolute most wonderful thing, is that when I rile them up with sugar and chaos and get them to the point where they're refusing to nap and bouncing off walls and _just_ starting in with the annoying whines... I get to hand them back to their parents so _I_ don't have to deal with any of the annoying parts! Everything about them is a win!"

"Oh, so I guess you weren't thinking about having any of your own, then."

Discord snorted. "Oh good gracious no. Besides, I couldn't even if I wanted to."

"Oh." Fluttershy felt a sudden surge of pity for him as she realized the likely reason for that. "Oh... I'm so sorry. You're... I guess you're like a mule, only worse?"

"What?" He stared at her as if the thought never occurred to him.

"Well, when a pony and a donkey fall in love and get married, their babies are mules, and when mules grow up _they_ can't have any children of their own without magical help. I guess... they call you a draconequus, so I thought maybe you look like that because you're half pony and half dragon? And then the chaos added on the other parts or something? So you're like a mule, except so much that even magic couldn't help you?"

He was still staring at her. "Where do you _get_ these ideas? No, I am not the result of a mommy pony and a daddy dragon loving each other very much, thank you."

"Then... then are you the last of your kind? I mean... no one has ever heard of a draconequus that _wasn't_ you, so..."

Discord shook his head. "No. Not the last of my kind, either." He'd gone much stiller than usual. Plainly something was bothering him. She didn't want to rub his face in something that bothered him, but if she didn't know what it was bothering him, she wouldn't be able to help him with it.

"There... there are others? So you... do you have a family?"

He looked straight ahead, not meeting her eyes. "Had."

"Oh, Discord! I'm so sorry... did something happen to them?"

"Oh, no, nothing happened to _them_." His tone turned bitter. "_They're_ all perfectly _fine_. But if I took it into my head to go back to the ancestral manse for a bit of the comforts of hearth and home... well, the best case scenario I could expect would be to be rapidly re-introduced to the pavement outside, end first. _They_ decided that I don't have family anymore. Not me."

"Oh... I'm so sorry..." She was not going to cry for him. It would just embarrass him. She was _not_ going to cry. Fluttershy snuggled next to him, putting a forelimb around him and nuzzling him again. "That's so cruel. They shouldn't do that to you."

"Yes, well, tell _them_ that."

"Can I? Could you take me there so I can tell them they should give you another chance?"

He sighed. "No, Flutterling. No, I can't, and you can't, and they wouldn't listen to you anyway."

"But that's so mean!" A horrible thought occurred to her. "Are they... are they all chaotic, like you?" Had her attempt to reform him driven a wedge between him and his family? Had _she_ made them reject him, because he wasn't chaotic enough for them anymore?

But he snorted. "Oh, I could only wish." He shook his head. "Some of them... could be entertainingly fun, on occasion, but most of them are dreadfully dull, dull, dull with a capital 'D U L L'. _No_ sense of humor what-so-EVER."

"So... is that why you can't have children? Because... because your family rejected you, so the other draconequuses did too?"

"Oh, you're still on _that_, Fluttershy? No no no. I could never have had children, not that I'd ever have wanted to, because... we just don't. We're immortal. Why would we need to have children? On the _rare_ occasions when we feel we need to fill out the ranks, we select a mortal we consider promising and elevate them to our plane of existence. Transform them into one of us." He considered. "Well, there was the one time those two decided to take the form of mortals – not ponies, it was a different species – and live among them, and they actually _did_ manage to have a child, but we executed them and we have no idea if the child's going to turn out to have any magic at all."

"You _executed_ them? For having a child?"

"For living among mortals as if they themselves were mortals, while still using their powers, actually."

Fluttershy went cold. "Discord... isn't that exactly what you're doing right now?"

Discord chuckled darkly. "It's different for me, Flutterbug. They've told me not to come home. They're not going to kill me for refusing to return when they're the ones that threw me out." He sighed. "At least I don't think so."

"They can't! That would... that would just be wrong! How could they tell you you're not allowed to come home and be with your own kind but you're also not allowed to be friends with anypony else, unless you stop using your powers, when they're so much a part of you? I mean, would any of them want to do that?"

"Oh, I don't know, Glory runs around pretending she has no powers all the time. And Isis never tells any of her mortal coltfriends what she really is. And most of the others don't actually spend any time with mortals anyway."

"Are they your sisters? Glory and Isis?"

He looked at her for the first time since the conversation had turned to his family. "You're... getting the wrong idea."

"I... wrong idea?"

"We're _all_ family. All the... beings like me. We're not... it's not like you mortals, with a mother and a father. We're _spirits._ Glory and Isis are... yes, you could call them my sisters. Especially Isis, she's treated me like a little brother for, oh, billions of years. But Glory and I were... well, once we were rather closer than that, in ways that generally speaking are not brotherly and sisterly, if you get my drift."

"Glory was your... special somepony? Or special draconequus, I guess?"

"I think she manifests as a dragon, actually. We don't all look the same. My form represents Chaos. Isis... she'd be whatever the species she appeared to happened to be. She's... more like the Spirit of Motherhood. Well, and the Spirit of Love since what happened to the actual Spirit of Love, and you know what, I think this conversation has officially ended because I'm not talking about her."

"About the Spirit of Love or about Isis?"

He stood up. "Fluttershy, how would you like to see something nopony but Celestia and Luna have ever seen before?"

"Uh – like what?" This was not the first time Discord had ever abruptly changed the subject, but it was the first time it seemed to Fluttershy that he was doing it for emotional reasons than because he'd simply gotten bored.

"Like something amazing! That only they have ever seen! Don't worry, it's not a scary something."

She wasn't entirely sure Discord actually knew what she would find scary, but he sounded so enthusiastic, and she wanted to cheer him up after accidentally getting him onto a topic that seemed to hurt him so much. "I... ok? I guess?"

And then suddenly everything was dark, and there were stars all around her, and she was falling, and when she beat her wings nothing happened. She was still falling. Fluttershy screamed.

"Fluttershy, Fluttershy, don't be scared. It's all right, no harm will come to you as long as I'm with you."

"I'm falling!" Fluttershy screamed. "Discord, please, help me!"

"You're not falling."

"I _am_! My wings aren't working, I'm still falling, _help me!_"

And then there were oddly shaped limbs around her, holding her. "You're _safe_, Fluttershy. Look down."

She looked down at the blue and white ball far under her hooves. "What... what is that? Where are we?"

"That is your world. We're in the space between the moon and the planet. There's no gravity here, that's why you feel as if you're falling."

He let go of her. She beat her wings frantically. She wasn't moving anywhere... but she still felt that she was falling. "No, I am falling, I am! Why don't my wings work, _WHY CAN'T I FLY?_"

"Oh... of course. A flighted creature expects to be able to _not_ fall. I should have realized." He snapped his fingers, and she suddenly felt the weight of air filling her wings again, felt that when she beat them she could hover. "Is that better?"

"Yes... yes, much better. Thank you." She looked down again. "That's... the whole world? It looks like... a toy. A children's ball."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She looked over at Discord. His wings weren't beating; he was effortlessly floating in mid-air. His lion's paw was stroking her mane, almost unconsciously, as if he didn't quite realize he was doing it. It was soft, much softer than a pony's hoof. "Look up," he said, and she did.

"The Moon! It's... it's so big!"

"Indeed it is. We're much closer to it than we are when we're on your planet."

"But... but the Sun is so tiny! How can that be?"

"It's not tiny at all. The Sun is enormous. It's just very, _very_ far away."

"But if it's so far away how does Princess Celestia..."

"She doesn't." Discord smirked. "The sun doesn't go around the planet, and Celestia doesn't move it. What she does is to move the _planet._ Now, Luna really does move the moon; moons go around planets, that's why they are moons. And she helps a bit with the planet-moving, during the night, but... it's rather jerky and uneven. There are places on your planet where life is barely holding on, where nopony can live because it jerks back and forth between day and night too unevenly, because the planet doesn't rotate smoothly. Celestia and Luna spin it, and since Luna has the moon to manage, she doesn't do so well with the planet. That's why generally Celestia has to raise the sun... Luna can't maintain the momentum on her own, unless she really concentrates."

"I... really? That doesn't... that doesn't make any sense! If Princess Celestia is just moving the planet, how could that make the sun rise?"

"It doesn't. The sun just appears to rise as she turns your part of the world to face it. What they really need is a third alicorn to help out with it to smooth out the rotation... a Princess of the Twilight, as it were." His smirk grew wider. "Of course they do have a third, but... planetary rotation isn't really where her special talents lie. So, technically, I suppose what they need is a _fourth_ alicorn." He shook his head. "Dear me, I never thought I'd be saying _that._"

Fluttershy looked down at her world. "It's so small, Discord. It looks... so fragile. Like it's made of glass. It looks so easy to... to break it."

"Yes," he said. "It is, you know. Shockingly easy. Which is, I suppose, what you and your friends are for. To make sure no one breaks it."

"Is Equestria right below us?"

"Yes, I suppose you've seen maps of the continents and oceans. We're above Equestria."

"Where do your people live down there?"

He snorted again. "We don't. We live in an entirely separate realm, a Continuum of our own, and we travel to any of the worlds we wish, when we wish. All those stars out there?" He waved his eagle talon. "Those are suns, like yours, but so far away they appear as tiny dots of light. And many, many of them have worlds of their own. And I've been to most of them. Maybe someday I'll take you to one of them. And Sparkypoo, I'm sure she'd appreciate the perspective."

"Do all those worlds have ponies like us on them?"

Discord laughed. "_None_ of them do, Fluttershy. You're quite unique. Some worlds have creatures that look a great deal like you, with significantly less color variation, but they're dumb animals and they have no magic whatsoever. Very, very few worlds have beings with magical powers on them at all, let alone the level of power you ponies can wield. On most worlds, the creatures that live there are nothing at all like you ponies. But many of those worlds do have thinking, feeling beings, like you ponies are. They might look more like animals than ponies to you... but I'm sure you'd make friends with them anyway."

She grinned. "Yeah, I bet I would."

And then suddenly they were standing outside her house. The sun was going down and night was falling. "Well?" Discord was bouncing up and down, which, at his size, looked utterly ridiculous. "What did you think?"

"I... I liked seeing it. It was... it was so tiny and fragile looking, but... so beautiful. But why is it blue, Discord? Shouldn't the world be green? Or was that the sky?"

"No, that was the oceans. The brown parts were the land you walk on. That high up you can't see very much of the green."

"But there was so much ocean! I didn't know the world had so much ocean in it!"

"Well, now you do." He leaned down into her face. "And you know what else?"

"What?"

He plucked at her muzzle. There was no pain, but she was stunned to see her nose in Discord's eagle talon. "I've got your nose!"

Fluttershy put her hooves to her face in dismay and shock. There was no blood, no pain, no rawness... it was as if she were made of clay and he'd just plucked off the tip of her muzzle. "Discord! Give that _back!_"

"You're going to have to catch me!" He took a few half-dancing steps backward, and then began running, backward, waving her nose in his talon. "I've got Fluttershy's noooose! I've got Fluttershy's noooose!"

Fluttershy launched herself at him, infuriated. "It isn't _funny_, Discord, give me back my nose!"

He launched himself into the air, flying upward. "It is so! It's totally hilarious! Oh, Fluttershy, you should see what you look like without a nose!" The ground beneath her feet turned into a giant mirror; she could still feel grass and dirt under her hooves, but when she _looked_ at it, it was a mirror. Her face looked freakish, a smooth depression in her muzzle where her nose ought to be.

"I _need_ my nose!"

"Oh, fine, here you go!" He snapped his fingers. Now she had a rabbit nose perched on top of her muzzle.

"My _own_ nose!" Fluttershy launched herself into the air after him. She wasn't a very good flyer... but she was very, very motivated, and Discord was laughing too hard to fly very fast, so she collided into him and knocked him into the ground within moments. Within another few moments, she was sprawled across his chest, pinning his eagle talon with her front hooves and his lion's limb with the other so he couldn't move either of his forelimbs. He had stretched the talon out as far as it would go, holding her nose away from her. "Give me back _my nose!_"

"But you look so adorable with the bunny nose—"

She leaned her face into his, which, given that she was stretched across his chest trying to pin his limbs, involved some contortion and actually hurt her neck, but she needed to do it to deliver The Stare. "Discord. My own nose. NOW. Or I will... I'll eat yours!"

"I'll bet it tastes like chicken," Discord said, still laughing.

"NOSE. NOW!"

"Oh, oh, very well. You did catch me, after all." He snapped the talon holding the nose, and the nose reappeared on her muzzle, exactly where it belonged.

And then Fluttershy started laughing because the whole situation was so completely ridiculous. Here she was, lying on top of the spirit of chaos, the dread danger that had terrorized all Equestria for so many years, pinning him to the ground because he'd stolen her nose. And both of them were laughing hysterically.

After a few minutes, the laughter wound down, and Fluttershy realized that the position she was in was more than slightly awkward. She blushed. "Oh... oh dear..."

"Is this the part where the comedy turns into a romance, and we start kissing passionately and pledging to love each other for all eternity?" Discord asked, still chuckling. "Because if it isn't, you might want to get off of me before the readers get the wrong idea."

Fluttershy yelped and leapt off him. "I, uh, _no!_ Discord, I'm your friend, but I don't—"

He sat up and clasped his paw and talon over his heart, with an exaggeratedly sad expression on his face. "Friendzoned again! Oh, why am I perpetually doomed to pine after mares from afar, never to be anyone's special somepony? Maybe I ought to take some tips from those pick-up artists..."

"I—I'm sorry, but I just don't—"

Discord started laughing raucously. "Oh, my dear Fluttershy! Oh, that was almost as funny as getting your nose was. Oh, my dear." He got to his feet and patted her head with his lion paw. "Relax. We're just friends, and I am more than delighted to keep it that way. I'm just teasing you."

Fluttershy sighed, relieved. It could completely wreck a friendship if one pony started to have romantic feelings and the other didn't, and that was _not_ how she saw her friend the Spirit of Chaos.

She looked up. The moon had risen. "I guess the Cutie Mark Crusaders are themselves again?"

"Oh, that happened a few hours ago. Twilight figured it out as soon as she got back. All they needed was to have their older sisters –or older sister figure in Scoot's case – kiss them to turn them back into ponies. That nonsense about true love being _one_ true love is perpetually laughable; anyone who really could love only one person in their entire existence would have a much harsher and more painful existence than even those who love no one. Even without my chaotic modifications, the spell _never_ depended on romantic love; it's just a foolish social convention that made anyone ever think it did." He sighed. "And to think I used to be able to come up with _challenging_ puzzles. Maybe I'll get Scootaloo to turn herself into a giant chicken."

"...Why Scootaloo?"

"Well, she has wings, silly. How can you be a giant chicken if you don't have any wings?"

"That... isn't really a good idea, Discord. It's, uh, it's kinda mean."

"I suppose so. I'd have to come up with something interesting for her friends to turn themselves into, or they'd feel left out. You never know, maybe they'll get their cutie marks in Chaos magic."

"I don't think they really want to get their cutie marks in Chaos magic."

"But the poor little things are _desperate_, Fluttershy. They tried being _garbage collectors._ How desperate do you have to be to try to find out whether your special life talent relies in garbage collecting?"

"It's... it's hard, when you don't know what it is you're really good at, or where you're going to go with your life."

"I suppose. Never a problem I had, so I can't relate." He opened the door to the house and eeled in, lowering his head almost to the floor and snaking it forward and up again. "I _must_ do something about your door."

"I guess you always knew what you were good at?"

He turned back toward her, smiling, but there wasn't any actual happiness in his smile. "I've always known what I was for, Flutterbug. The part that took me time to figure out was that no one actually _wants_ what I'm for, however badly they need it. Including those that made me to do what I do. They recognized they needed it, they made me to do it, and then they decided they really didn't like it."

"That's not always true... your chaos is really funny sometimes, and everyone likes to laugh."

"But I'm not just Chaos, Fluttershy." His cloud had melted into a puddle while they were out; he snapped his fingers and reformed it into a cloud again so he could sit on it, although this time it was purple, which probably meant it was going to rain grape juice. "I'm _Discord_. I'm disharmony. I'm argument, and conflict. I upend the normal order of things, I challenge the status quo, I afflict the comfortable and poke the afflicted. I test, I question, I turn your beliefs upside down and shake them to see what dark things you might have hidden inside. I push the button and erase your master tape. I am your brain on a frying pan, I'm every secret you had brought to light and written with letters of fire across the sky. I sold the emperor his new clothes. I'm the one who'll be the villain you can rally against when you need to become a hero."

"But you're more than that, I can tell. You can be a friend. I've seen it. You don't have to be nothing but disharmony. You can be chaos that's good chaos."

He sighed. "I know," he said, "but do you know how unbelievably rare it is that anyone is willing to accept 'good chaos' when I offer it? People don't like to make friends with the guy who makes a point of arguing with them and poking them in their weak spots, even if my goal was to make them stronger. And... friendship often gets in the way of what I'm trying to do, anyway. I spent a thousand years training my perfect enemy to stand up against me, and because she'd once considered me a friend, she refused to do what she was supposed to do and instead she turned me into stone."

"You mean Princess Celestia? She considered you a _friend_ once?"

He smiled sardonically. "For whatever good it did either of us, which is to say, none whatsoever. But look at the time!" Discord leapt off the couch. "Speaking of Celestia, I absolutely _must_ go have a conversation with her before she falls all the way asleep and becomes a complete crankypants."

"I thought you were avoiding Princess Celestia."

"I'm avoiding annoying Princess Celestia. Most of the time. With entertaining exceptions. But I do have to go have a conversation with her, oh, and then I simply must turn some owls into chickens, because do you have any idea how stuck-up owls are about the fact that they can see in the dark? Besides if I don't turn _somepony_ into a chicken it's likely to sneak out behind my back and happen while I'm trying to do something boring, which, by the way, is why no one should try to get me to do things that are boring, because if I'm bored and daydreaming about giant chickens, well let's just say I need to be careful what I daydream about and get the ya-yas out of my system in a controlled way or the result could be complete, uncontrolled chaos." He stopped in the middle of his rant. "Which, why am I avoiding that anyway?"

"Because you're reformed and you want to have friends?"

"Oh, yes! I almost forgot. Thank you for the reminder, Fluttershy. Isn't it your bedtime?"

"In a little while, yes."

"Well, I won't be here when you go to bed, because I'll be conversing with Celly Belle and possibly some chickens that used to be owls, so so long, farewell, _auf wiedersehen_, good night! I'll see you in the morning!"

Fluttershy gave him a hug. This time he didn't even make a face. "Good night, Discord. Please don't annoy the princess too much, and turn the owls back when they're sick of being chickens?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, stick my eye in a cupcake. Wait, that doesn't rhyme. Perhaps I should stick my eye in a pie?"

She gave him a brief nuzzle. "And can you put that cloud back outside?"

"Well, I don't want to waste the grape juice. How about I put it in Applejack's bathtub? Then she can mix it with some apple juice and make grapple!"

"Or how about you make a whole lot of pitchers in the apple orchard and make it rain into them, and then Applejack won't have a problem taking her shower in the morning?"

"Ugh, really?"

"Yes, really," Fluttershy said firmly.

"All right, _fine._" He snapped his talons and the cloud disappeared. "See you tomorrow, Fluttershy." And then he disappeared as well, in a flash of light.


	4. Lest Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

"CELLY!"

Celestia opened her eyes and restrained her first impulse, which was to jump out of bed and prepare for an attack. "Discord. I suppose it doesn't make any difference to you that I am _trying_ to sleep?"

He was bouncing up and down on the end of her bed, which should have made the entire bed tip over from his size and weight, but he was either making himself lighter or the bed heavier, so it didn't. "Oh, come now, Celestia, it's been over a thousand years since I last teleported into your bedroom while you were trying to sleep! Don't you think I'm overdue?"

"No." She did climb out of her bed and get to her feet, tiredly. This wasn't an attack. If Discord actually meant to attack her, he'd do it when she was wide awake; he was perfectly happy to annoy sleeping ponies, but he was far too arrogant to attack one. It'd be beneath him, implying that he had felt he needed such an advantage. "Is there a particularly good reason why you're here?"

"Do I really need a reason? I'm _Chaos._"

"You have reasons for everything you do, Discord, even if half of them boil down to 'because you felt like it.'"

"But I have to deliver you my Twilight Sparkle report! I was having so much fun stealing Fluttershy's nose, I completely forgot about it."

"I hope you gave her her nose back."

"I certainly did. She defeated me fair and square. But then I realized, oh dear, the moon is up and Celestia may even have gone to _sleep_ and yet I have not given her my report for the night!"

"You could have sent me a letter."

"And I could have written the report in tendrils of mist in the fog! Or cleverly arranged burning bushes! Or I could have made every foal's alphabet block in Equestria come here and do a little dance for you before settling down into the pattern of my report! Or I could have made the furniture speak to you in my voice! You'd have enjoyed that, wouldn't you have, Celly? I know you love my voice."

"I know someone in this room loves your voice," Celestia said wearily, "but it isn't me."

Discord whipped his head around. "Who? Who? Do I have a secret admirer concealed in your closet? You must tell me, Celestia, I'm dying to know!"

"Never mind. If you've come to give me a report, you may as well do so."

He flew over to a chair and perched on the back of it, which was basically impossible because one of his feet was a hoof and shouldn't have been able to perch on anything, but impossible was a word with no meaning when it came to Discord. "She needs higher stakes."

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know, let's see." He began to tick things off on the claws on his paw. "Defeated Nightmare Moon. Defeated _me_. The Changelings. Sombra. Give her an actual battle, and she does remarkably well. But the moment she's told, 'This is an exercise', she gets... not lazy, but sloppy. Has a hard time thinking outside the box. I basically had to lead her to the answers like I was pulling on her reins."

Celestia shuddered slightly. "I wish you would not remind me of reins."

"I wish you would not remind me of statues, but your garden's still full of them and you won't let me make them go dance, so there." He climbed down from the back of the chair. "Besides. Every so often maybe someone needs to remind you of what I _did_ for you ponies, and since Luna was a kid and barely remembers it, the only one around to deliver the reminder... is me."

"I've never forgotten."

"Are you sure about that?" His head curled around, looping over her body to murmur in her other ear. "You'd think that if someone saved you from mind control, and then from execution, and then made you _immortal_, and then helped you achieve everything you'd dreamed of since you were a tiny filly and made you a _princess_, you might possibly _not want to turn him into stone_."

"You're not nearly so knowledgeable as you pretend to be if you think I ever _wanted_ to do that," Celestia snapped. "I had two ways I could stop you and they were both awful, and I tried for nearly a thousand years to find a third way. I tried persuading you, I tried begging you, I tried reason, I tried emotion..." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter, anymore. I was sorry for doing it even before it was done, and I spent a thousand years mourning what I'd done to you, but it was the only way."

"Well, except for the other way."

"Which I believed would kill you."

"It's a rite of banishment. I'm an immortal spirit. How do you get the idea that banishing me kills me?"

"You are _not_ merely a spirit," Celestia said. She put her hoof against his chest. "A heart beats in there, Discord. Yes, I know, you have no mortal weaknesses. You don't sleep, you eat only because it amuses you, but still, you wear a form made of flesh and blood. I have seen you feel pleasure, and pain. And when we perform a rite on a flesh and blood body which vaporizes it in magical fire and banishes the spirit within it to another realm, never to return to this world... under most circumstances we'd call that 'murder'. Did you _want_ me to burn your flesh and banish you forever from this world? Did you really never see how similar that would have been to killing you?" Her eyes might have filled with tears if she had not finished with tears for Discord so many centuries ago. "My oldest friend. Was I supposed to kill you rather than turn you into stone?"

He sighed. "It would have made life simpler." Discord flopped backward onto her bed. "I took Fluttershy into space today to look at the world."

Celestia took a deep breath. "You're not planning anything with her, are you? She's an ordinary pony, you know."

"Ordinary?" He chuckled. "She's a pegasus whose flight talent can be measured in the single digits, she has no magic to speak of, she's scared of everything, I know, I know. She's not the smartest pony that ever lived. She has no great destiny. But if you think that the first living being I've found in millennia to be both willing and capable of befriending me when I'm actually _trying_ to annoy the living daylights out of her is _ordinary..._ "

"None of the bearers of the Elements are truly ordinary, it's true," Celestia said. "And yes. Fluttershy's ability to see beneath your mask is all the more amazing when you consider how often I _have_ seen beneath your mask, and yet I could never have done what she did. But... she's mortal."

"I don't have any intention of changing that," he said softly. "Well, unless I think that Sparkypoo needs her pals to anchor her through eternity, given that she hasn't got a little sister and immortality's not on the agenda for her bro... which reminds me, what's Can't Dance thinking? Hasn't she been around long enough to know what you _don't_ do with mortals?"

"No. She hasn't." Celestia sighed. "He's a unicorn. He could survive a long time, with magic. But in the end, you're correct; he won't remain. Twilight... might need support, but that will be my call to make, and the choice of those affected by the decision, not yours. You have a bias."

"You think I've never seen a mortal friend die?" Discord said mockingly.

"I think you have seen so many that it made you close your heart to friendship," Celestia said simply. "And now that it is open again I don't know what you'll do, because neither do you."

Discord sat up. "Score one for the alicorn," he said. "Very well, then. I won't make any more ponies immortal unless _you_ approve. It's not as if my track record thus far is impressing me, after all." A twisted, unhappy smile appeared on his face. "Besides, the point might be totally moot! I may not even be around to see it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What do you mean what do I mean? You're the one who had the conversation with Glory. She won't even talk to me."

"She said you had been exiled, and they would not free you from the stone this time, and you would eventually go mad if forced to remain within it, and then you'd destroy our world and be destroyed for it yourself."

"Huh. Probably true. But she didn't tell you anything else?"

"She told me that she loved you."

"Oh, Celestia, you're such a bad liar."

"She didn't speak those _words_, Discord. What she said was that she _had_ loved you, and I think she was trying to convince me, or perhaps herself, that she no longer does. But I have met a few mares in love with stallions who break their hearts, in my time. And she may have appeared to me as a dragon, but I know that the heart of a dragon is no different from the heart of a pony... and the heart of a spirit has always seemed remarkably similar as well. What did you do to her?"

He shrugged. "I might possibly have suggested that spending time with her was so boring it was making me want to spork my own eyeballs out?"

"Oh, Discord."

"What? She's clingy. And _jealous_. I never promised her eternity and I never even _implied_ monogamy. Love doesn't put you in a cage."

"Sometimes..." she said softly. "Sometimes love has no choice."

He snorted. "No. Necessity might put you in a cage despite what love would rather do, but it isn't _love_ putting you in a cage, or else it's not love. Glory wants to be able to own me. No one can own a spirit, not even another spirit, and most especially no one can own _me_. She calls it love, well, maybe it is, but if love is a prison then I can do without it."

"I thought your love was the Spirit of Love, not the Spirit of Righteous Warfare." As soon as Celestia said it, she felt bad about poking what was undoubtedly an old wound. Glory had told her that the Spirit of Love had tried to kill Discord and had been punished by being stripped of her magic and immortality. Discord's track record with his loves among the spirit kind seemed to be fairly similar to his track record of friendship with anyone else.

He stiffened. "Things change. Not even I always find that they change for the better, all the time."

"So you lost your first love among the spiritkind, and did your best to drive away the second. I wish I could say this surprises me." She paced. "The first time I told you that you were alone, during your reign of chaos, you laughed at me and said you were used to it, and you didn't even seem bitter. But when I said that to you while the Element Bearers were in the labyrinth, when you were trying to taunt me, it hurt you. You tried to hide it, but I saw. You weren't truly alone before, were you? You had the other spirits. Your... family. And now you don't."

"Is there a point to this or are you just trying to get some licks in now that you can?"

"It's why I thought you might be willing to open your heart to Fluttershy," Celestia said. "Because Glory told me enough that I realized that now you are truly alone. Now, you need a friend, more than ever before." She reached out to him again, stroking his back with her hoof. "I find it telling that when you're exiled, you choose this place to be your home."

"Ha, that's what you think. You were my _second_ choice. I had other candidates. I went aboard a ship, where I'd had dealings with the captain and crew, and offered them my friendship, and my services as a guide."

"And what did you do to them when they said no?"

"Celestia, you think so little of me! What makes you think they said no?"

"Aside from the fact that you're here and not there? I _know_ you, Discord."

He sighed. "I introduced them to a force of ultimate order and perfect harmony."

That might have sounded like a good thing... coming from anyone but Discord. Celestia shuddered on behalf of these unknown ponies, or whatever they had been. "Did they survive it?"

"After their captain recognized how utterly helpless he was to handle the threat without me, yes. I saved all their lives, thank you very much. Well, mostly all."

"Mostly all."

"Hey," he said defensively. "When you're facing a force of ultimate order and you only take 18 casualties out of a crew of a thousand, you're doing _really_ well. And now they're forewarned and can prepare for the forces of order's inevitable attack. They thought they were ready for anything, and they would have gotten trampled if I hadn't taught them otherwise. Now they've got a fighting chance."

"And eighteen dead that you did not need to allow to die."

"And if no one had died, they would have thought it was all a game." His look was cold and hard, far more so than she usually saw from Discord. "Folks don't always take me seriously. For some reason."

Celestia sighed. "I feel sorry for them," she said. "And I wish I could have spoken to them, to warn them of you and your temper, but what's done is done, even for you."

He looked away. "For what it's worth... I do feel just a little bit sorry for that. I... don't like to do things just because I lost my temper. The results... don't always end up with what I would have wanted."

"Well. I'm not sorry you chose to come here for your exile, then. I've much more experience with your temper tantrums than I imagine others would, and we have better tools to manage your behavior. And... I did miss you."

"But you wouldn't have let me out if Glory hadn't come and told you I was likely to go crazy and blow up your planet to get free," he said mockingly.

"If all she had told me was that you would go mad, I would have tried to find a way. If all she had told me was that you were exiled, and now alone without your own kind, I would have understood that you might have been willing to make concessions for friendship, now, and I would have tried to find a way. If she had never come to me, then you're correct, I'd have had no reason to believe either that being bound would do you more harm than it already had, or that you'd be any more amenable to reason than you were any of the other times. It doesn't mean I wasn't sorry for the necessity." She sighed again. "That, too, is in the past. I find myself... glad that you're here now. For some reason." She smiled, teasing.

"Well. They say home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. I suppose, by that definition... Equestria's my only home now."

She sat next to him for a moment in companionable silence, before she realized he'd successfully dodged her question. "But you never answered me. What did you mean by you might not be around to see it?"

He squirmed. "It's... hardly important. Probably will come to nothing. And it might be millennia yet before they reach a decision, and it's not as if any such decision is written in stone, yet."

"What, Discord? Tell me."

"Well..." He looked away. "The main reason they told me to take a hike is that I'm sort of on trial."

"Wait. That makes no sense. You are on trial, so that they _exile_ you so you cannot speak on your own behalf?"

"Yeah, that's how it works. They've got all the facts in front of them, Celestia. They're gods. They're basically omniscient. But they don't want me trying to influence the decision with—" He pulled a mocking face. "—_friendship_. So they're all in a secret meeting for however many centuries it's going to take them to decide what they're going to do with me, and maybe it's going to be absolutely nothing and I'll be pardoned and they'll fall all over themselves apologizing to me for the inconvenience!... but somehow, I doubt it."

"What do you think they will do?"

"The options on the table are, a pardon so nothing, I go home, all's forgiven, la la la; stick me in a big rock, like you did, until I break down and promise to be good, but that's less than likely considering the number of times they've done it before and it never took; indefinite exile, like I've got now; stripping me of my magic and immortality; or just straight up execution. To be honest, both those last two are really the same thing, it's just about whether they're going to drag it out to incredibly tedious lengths or not."

"Oh, Discord. Is there anything I can do, or that anypony can do?"

"Aside from letting me turn the rivers into pink lemonade and make Cloudsdale into a roller skating derby rink and make all the sliding boards into Moebius strips?"

"I'm not even seeing how that would help you."

"It wouldn't, but it might distract me from my troubles for a little while."

"Well, I can't allow you to do any of that, but I can try to be your friend again, for as long as they allow you to remain."

He sighed. "That's actually more than I could expect of anypony, so... hey, Celestia, let's go ocean skating! I don't even have to turn it into ice, we can just use magic to skate around on the top. Or right under the top! Have you ever been upside down under water and looked up at the sky?"

"Yes. The time that you made everyone in Canterlot a fish."

"You were a _sea horse_. Not a fish."

"And I'm afraid I have duties."

"I could handle the planetary rotation for you."

"At normal speed?"

He made a face. "Isn't that kind of dull? I mean think about it, everypony wishes they could get some more sleep at night, don't they? And more done during the day? So why don't I just make them _longer_ than usual? That wouldn't be all that chaotic at all, really."

"That's exactly why I haven't asked you to help with the planetary rotation."

"Well, Sparky's not ready yet."

"I am aware of that."

"But you're going on a vacation with me as soon as she is. She can manage the day cycle for a week with Luna's help and you and I can go to another planet entirely! We can spelunk through ice caves, and fly over mountains you've never seen before, and go skiing around the gravity well of an alien sun, and it would be marvelous. Come on, you know you want to."

She smiled wryly. "Come back to me with the suggestion later, once Twilight has ascended, and maybe I'll say yes."

"It's a date, then!"

Celestia yawned. "But now I need to sleep, Discord. Some of us are closer to being mere mortals than you are."

"Why _do_ you all do that? So boring. Close your eyes and end your consciousness for a time. Isn't that really just like being dead?"

"You don't awaken from being dead," Celestia said. "And... I would have given much to give you the gift of sleep, as we did the alicorns we bound with the Elements. They don't suffer, in stone; they only sleep. I hoped the same for you... the guilt near-crushed me when I realized you were awake and trapped."

He sighed. "Do you know I have actually developed a phobia of closed-in spaces?" he said. "Have you any idea how ridiculous that is?"

"It doesn't sound ridiculous."

"It's completely ridiculous! I'm a spirit of chaos! I'm virtually omnipotent! Aside from those ridiculous Elements I never should have given you the raw materials to build, nothing can restrain me! Why should I be afraid of _anything_, much less being somewhere where the walls are too close?" He closed his eyes. "I push myself. Pinkie Pie likes to play Hide and Go Seek, and that sense of hers intrigues me. Her magic goes sideways to the rest of you; she's much more like me than you realize. So I play a game, and I put myself in tiny places and wait for her to find me, because it's a game, right? I'm the master of games. A game can't possibly harm me."

There was nothing she could say to that except, "I'm sorry," softly.

"Ah, I'll get over it sooner or later. Or I won't. Time will tell." He got up. "Well. I suppose I need to take my leave of you before I start telling you all about my childhood traumas and my relationship with my mother."

"Discord, you can tell your friends your problems. Even if you think they're irrational. And why would your problems need to make any more sense than your whims do?"

He glared at her. "If my _problem_ was that the grass outside is entirely too green, and it is mind-numbingly dull and in desperate need of some purple and orange to liven it up, and also it lacks wheels and I am really quite certain it needs some, then I would have a problem that makes no sense. If my problem is that I'm irrationally afraid of tiny rooms and low ceilings and narrow passageways because I spent many, many years trapped inside my own _skin_ and now I've started to panic at the thought of being trapped anywhere, even though I cannot be trapped anywhere because hello, godlike powers of chaos, that is not a problem that makes no sense. It makes perfect sense. It is just incredibly stupid."

And he vanished.

Celestia stared at the space he had occupied, eyes unfocused slightly, too many memories crowding in on her mind. "I'm sorry," she said again, though he wasn't there. "You never gave me any other way. But still, I am sorry."


	5. The Calm Before The Storm

Twilight Sparkle was having a nightmare about misfiled books. She was running down the stacks in the library, trying desperately to get all the books filed, except that everywhere she turned, books were in the wrong places and she couldn't find the correct places for anything. And Spike had turned into a full-grown dragon and gone away and she was never going to see him again and he couldn't help her, and she couldn't defeat the Changelings if she didn't put all the books away. She cantered around a stack, the cart she was pulling tipping dangerously behind her but not falling over because she _willed_ it not to fall, and encountered Discord sitting in front of the checkout desk, smoking a cigar.

"This is _your_ fault!" she shouted at him. "I should have known you were still a villain! You _can't smoke in a library!"_ With a pulse of magic, she snatched the cigar from him.

He leered at her. "Twilight, your dream symbolism is _entirely_ too revealing. Really? You're going to _steal my cigar?_ A bit of... magic envy there?"

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Discord," she snapped.

"And sometimes it's a goldfish," he said, and it was. "You're really going to have to wake up. I came here to have a rational conversation and besides, sweet little Loonie's going to have conniptions if she finds me on her turf."

Twilight blinked, and took a deep breath. She was at home. In bed. At night, with the library locked up tight and Spike sleeping in his own bed and everything the way it ought to be, including the Cutie Mark Crusaders being ponies again and the books all filed. It was just a silly nightmare.

A pair of yellow eyes hung down in front of hers. "Boo."

"AAAAAH!" Instinctively Twilight cast a protection spell, flung herself out of bed, and threw herself into a defensive stance. She could barely even _see_ the draconequus in the darkness of the room. How could somepony that massive disappear into the shadows so completely? If it weren't for his eyes she still wouldn't be certain he was even there.

"Nice scream. Lots of 'hero launching herself at the villain' in there, only a tiny touch of 'little filly shrieking for her mommy'. I give it a 9.2."

"Discord, is there a reason I am not summoning my friends to turn you back into a statue _right now?_"

"Because I haven't done anything to threaten you, and you'd look absolutely ludicrous if you tried to explain to Celly Belle that you had to stone me again because I said 'boo'?"

"You appeared in my bedroom while I was sleeping! You _invaded my dream!_"

"It's hardly my fault you dream so loudly. I'm surprised Luna wasn't down here yelling 'OH FOR OUR ROYAL SISTER'S SAKE, WILT THOU KEEP THE RACKET DOWN THERE, TWILIGHT SPARKLE? WE ARE TRYING TO RULE THE NIGHT, NOT BE DEAFENED BY IT.'"

"It _is_ your fault you're in my bedroom at _night_ when I have _distinctively_ not invited you."

"Does that mean I'm invited to your bedroom in the morning? Twilight, I'm flattered, but I'm _much_ too old for you—"

She hit him in the head with the books from her nighttable that she'd been reading before bed. "Discord. You _woke_ me up. If this is some kind of stupid prank, you're going to regret it."

"What if it was a very, very clever prank?"

"Then you'd regret it even more."

"What're you going to do, tickle me? Oh, I know, you're going to make me write another _friendship_ report with thinly disguised threats. Or, or! I know! You're going to become the Terrible—"

With a silent apology to the music teacher, she reached out with her magic, grasped the music teacher's piano, and dropped it on Discord's head. He went down like a stone balloon, amidst a horrible crash of musical notes. _I'll repair it with my magic afterward and return it before morning_, she promised herself.

Discord pulled himself free from the wreckage of the piano, staring at Twilight as if she'd just grown a second horn, or maybe a second head, and then began laughing uproariously. "Sparky, Sparky, that was _brilliant!_ Oh, I didn't know you had it in you. That was _amazing._ Why, if I were actually here to threaten you, that little bit of slapstick would've amused me so tremendously I'd have agreed to hold off on any dire assaults of chaos at _least_ until morning, just to reward you for the laugh." He started snickering again. "You, Twilight Sparkle, _teleported_ a _piano_ and... and dropped..." Now he was laughing too hard to keep talking.

"What did you do to Spike, Discord?" Twilight asked coldly, holding her magic at ready.

"Why, what makes you think... oh, my... oh, I think I might actually have hurt my rib... a _piano..._" Anything else he might have said dissolved into his laughing fit.

She summoned a spell, her horn starting to glow. "Discord. Spike didn't wake up even though I dropped a piano on you, and he's not waking even though you're laughing loudly enough to wake the entire _street_. I am asking for the last time, what have you done to him?"

"I'm just making sure he gets a peaceful night's sleep, Sparklepie. After all, I came here to ask you for a favor, and it would be terribly rude of me to let our _negotiations_ disturb your friend's rest! He's a growing dragon, he needs his beauty sleep." He stood up, started brushing himself off, caught sight of the piano again and re-started laughing. "You dropped a _piano..._ on the _god of chaos_... ohhh. Ohh, I needed that. That was... you've made my whole night, Sparky. That was _hilarious._"

"Glad you approve," Twilight said shortly. "If Spike doesn't wake up tomorrow in exactly the condition I'd normally expect, it's going to be something a lot more painful than a piano next time."

"Oh, relax! Your wittle dragon baby will be just _fine_. Truth is, I haven't actually put him to sleep... I really do not have the patience to maintain a sleep spell worth casting. I just took us out of time."

She relaxed. "Oh, well, that does explain – YOU DID _WHAT?_"

"Stopped time, locally. You and I are in a little bubble. While the world all around us is frozen between moments, you and I are the only creatures still stirring. Oh, and that Doctor fellow, but he's got bigger tomatoes to fry at the moment than widdle old me." He chuckled. "Honestly you know that makes the piano even _more_ impressive? You had to pull it across a time differential. Quite a lot of power there."

"I was motivated. What do you want, Discord?"

"Why, what makes you so sure there's something I want? Maybe I was just looking for a bit of entertainment."

"Do you not listen to yourself? You said just a minute ago that you were here to ask me for a favor."

He slapped himself in the forehead. "Of course! How could I have forgotten? It must have been that bump I took on the head."

Twilight took a deep breath. "Well, it's going to have to wait until I fix this piano." She concentrated her magic on repairing the piano. Since she wasn't an expert on pianos, it was going to take a lot of focus. Maybe a book on piano repair. She couldn't just undo what she'd done, since it wasn't magic that had destroyed the piano but gravity; she had to actually put it back together as if she were assembling it.

Discord snapped his fingers and the piano suddenly stood in front of her in pristine condition.

"Or, I guess that works," she said. "Wait, does it actually work now? Or does it play horns or something?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm here for a _favor_, remember? Yes, the piano works in exactly the incredibly dull way pianos are supposed to work. Though I'll let you put it back where you got it from, after we're done here, because after all, you must remember that even the most hilarious prank isn't consequence-free."

"That's rich, coming from you," Twilight said.

"Au contraire," he said. "I have _far_ more expertise than you do in the consequences of playing hilarious pranks." He sat down on her bed.

"Like being turned into a statue?"

"Like that," he said, a wry smile tugging at his mouth, with just a hint of something... bitter? Sorrowful? It was so hard to tell; Discord's face was incredibly expressive, but exactly _what_ he was expressing was frequently unclear since he seemed to have the ability to display four or five different emotions at the same time, all of them contradicting each other to some degree. "Or... other things."

"Well." Twilight pulled up a chair and sat down at the piano, since there was no room to sit anywhere else and she sure as hay wasn't going to sit next to Discord on the bed. "What favor do you want, and why do you think I'm going to do you a favor?"

"You're going to do me a favor because of the magic of friendship, of course!" Discord announced cheerfully. "And also the commutative property of algebra."

"What does the commutative property of algebra have to do with your favor?" she sighed.

"It doesn't, directly. But the commutative property of algebra applies to friendship. Fluttershy is your friend, and Fluttershy is my friend, and therefore by the commutative property of algebra we can cancel Fluttershy out of the equation and declare that you are my friend, and that's why you're going to help me!"

"Friendship is not an algebraic equation."

"Maybe it's not." He leaned forward. "But if you don't help me, the consequences to your friends might be... unendurable. And no, that is not a threat. Believe me or don't, but I'm trying to prevent something bad from happening to Fluttershy."

"Well, of course I'll do anything I can to help Fluttershy. You should have said that in the first place! What is it you need?"

"I need to know how badly everypony on this planet wants me dead."

Twilight blinked. "You... what?"

"Let me rephrase, since I didn't... exactly limit my activities to ponies, in the old days. And there may actually be some dragons around who still remember me, personally. You're the researcher, you have practically all the books ever written on this planet stashed somewhere around here—"

"Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration—"

"Perhaps not. I could _give_ you all the books ever written on this planet, if it would help."

He actually sounded serious. Discord never sounded serious. "What do you need me to research?"

"Exactly what I said. How badly do the beings on this world want me dead? Who remembers me, and holds sufficient hatred toward me that they'd be willing to try to kill me if they thought they actually could?"

"Probably everyone," Twilight said without thinking.

Discord didn't move for a moment. He drew a deep, slow breath. "Well. That's... rather what I expected, actually." He got up. "I—"

"Wait!" As he looked down at her, Twilight said hastily, "I was just talking off the top of my head. I don't actually know. Why do you need to know? How does this affect Fluttershy?"

"Well. Let us say, hypothetically, that I have received word that... there is a possibility... that..."

He was looking away, at the floor, as if he was ashamed. Discord being ashamed of anything was new, and frankly, odd. "A possibility that what?"

"Let's just say that my grasp of the power of Chaos is possibly more precarious right now than I would have ever imagined it becoming." He sat back down again. "Twilight. If I... if I no longer had all my power... if those who despise me and want to destroy me learned that their ambitions might actually be achievable... how much danger would Fluttershy be in?"

"What's wrong with your power?" Twilight asked, alarmed. Not that she didn't think he absolutely deserved it if his power levels dropped drastically, but the thought of Discord's enemies coming after Fluttershy to get to him was a horrible notion. "Maybe there's something we can do."

"There's nothing wrong with my power," he snapped defensively. "Right _now_. And there's hardly any certainty that there ever will be. This is... a hypothetical. A... possibility... with a statistical probability that's risen to non-zero. I just... I'm quite certain it's going to be nothing and I'll end up smacking myself in the forehead for having even the tiniest concern, but... well, you wouldn't want me to take the slightest risk with Fluttershy, would you?"

"Well, no."

"So. I need a realistic assessment, Twilight. Most of the beings I... um, tormented a bit, back in the day... well, few beings on this world live a thousand years. And I hardly had time for more than a little harmless fun and games before you six spoilsports locked me up again, the last time."

"It wasn't exactly harmless fun and games, Discord."

"It also wasn't the sort of thing that leads anypony to declare their eternal hatred and swear to spend the rest of their lives seeking vengeance. Whereas... some of the _other_ beings on this world... have possibly even less of a sense of humor than you ponies."

"And a longer lifespan?"

"Yes, you see my concern there." He shrugged. "Possibly no one remembers me except as a story to tell their children. But... ponies are not the only beings with the potential to live a very, very, very long time, and... some beings have a better collective memory than ponies do. If, hypothetically, I were... unable... to defend myself... or anyone else... I need a quantitative assessment of the danger."

Twilight looked at him hard. "For _Fluttershy's_ sake, of course. Not your own. You're not worried about the danger to _yourself_ one little bit."

He laughed. "Now, Twilight, don't go putting words in my mouth, or you might wake up my appetite and I'd have to go snack on some more of your spells. Obviously I'm concerned with the danger to myself, I'd be foolish not to be. But why would _you_ care about that? One thing we can both agree on is that neither of us want to see Fluttershy threatened by anypony coming after _me_. And if the information that you give me in order to help protect _her_ ends up helping me protect myself as well, I'm sure you'll consider that a small price to pay to ensure your friend's safety."

"You're despicable. You'd hide behind _Fluttershy_ so that we'd all protect you?"

His eyes narrowed, and his voice was cold. "Say of me what you will in any other regard, Twilight, but question my desire to keep Fluttershy safe again and I may break my personal resolve not to turn ponies into stone, are we clear? There's absolutely nothing wrong with my powers right _now._" Discord stood. "I would really rather not leave my new home and the first being in _millennia_ to reach out to me and offer friendship when they had no reason to believe I'd return it. Particularly not if I've... become... _vulnerable_, in any way. But if my presence would endanger her, then should worst come to worst, I'll go. And that's what I need to know. _Before_... anything... bad happens."

"I... I'm sorry." Maybe he was using his magic, maybe he was manipulating her, but Twilight found she couldn't believe he was anything other than sincere. He really didn't want to lead his enemies to Fluttershy's door. "You... if it came to it, couldn't you take refuge in Canterlot? I'm sure Princess Celestia could protect you from pretty much anything."

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "I'm sure she could. But I would very much prefer to know what the odds are before I go begging to her with hat in hand."

"All right." Twilight got up, pushing the chair away from the piano. "I'll do your research. For Fluttershy's sake if for no other reason. I mean, she's a lot tougher than she looks, but she's so kind and sweet, she'd never abandon a friend in danger... so you're right, if someone came after you she'd be right there in the line of fire, and if you didn't have your magic who knows if you could get a message to the rest of us in time?"

"Thank you, Twilight Sparkle, it's been delightful doing business with you." He lifted his eagle talon to snap it, and then stopped. "Needless to say, I would appreciate you keeping this particular task to yourself, along with the potential necessity for it. I'd hardly wish to worry Fluttershy... _or_ tip off any residents of Ponyville who found my games particularly unamusing that there's any possibility they could... express their displeasure, in the near future."

Twilight nodded. What he said made sense. "But I'm going to tell Princess Celestia. Because if this is some kind of elaborate trick I just can't see through, she'd be more likely to see it than me, and if you're honest... you can't say the Princess can't keep a secret, or that she wouldn't deserve to know."

He smiled sardonically. "She already knows, but by all means, Twilight, report on me to your shining spymaster. Reassure yourself that this isn't some elaborate plot of mine to make you do wholly unnecessary work, exhaust yourself, and wind up with a nasty head cold. Or whatever you thought my dastardly plot might be. " There was now a fedora on his head, and he tipped it to her. "I'll bid you good night. Don't go waking up your little dragon to send Celestia a letter, I've already woken her up once tonight and at her age, she _really_ needs her beauty sleep."

"I'll contact the princess in the morning. She might have some books I'll need to check into anyway."

"Good. Let me know what you find out. Don't bother sending a letter, I'll hear you if you just call my name. Unless things have gone farther than I'd expected, in which case the point will be moot."

He vanished. Twilight leaned on the piano, sagging. Without adrenaline driving her, it was going to be really, really hard to teleport this piano back, and she should have known better than to do it in the first place. The fact that Discord had approved of her dropping a piano on his head was simply even further proof that she should never have done it. But she didn't look forward to trying to explain to the music teacher in the morning what the piano was doing in her bedroom, either.

She sighed. She was never going to get back to sleep tonight. After she moved the piano, she might as well get to work. Researching all the beings that hated Discord seemed like a task that could possibly take a very, very long time.

* * *

There was somepony lying next to Fluttershy.

Her heart jumped into her throat, which seemed to have the effect of making her throat freeze, so she couldn't scream. Her body felt equally frozen. There was _somepony_ lying in her bed with her, curled up against her like a... like a coltfriend or something, except... wait. There was a feathered wing lying across hers, and something softer than a hoof laid over her shoulder and against her foreleg, and... a tail curled around her feet... a very long tail...

Some, although not all, of the sheer terror left her then, and she took a deep breath. "Discord?"

"Hmm?"

Another deep breath. So she was right, it was him. In the dim light of the moon shining through her window it was hard to see anything. "Why are you lying in bed with me?"

"You're cuddly."

"I'm... I'm serious... this is kinda weird, you know."

"Only 'kinda' weird? I must be slipping."

"Discord, _why_ are you laying in my bed?"

"If I were laying in your bed, there'd be an egg in it."

"What?"

"Nevermind. Wordplay's not your strong suit, I see." She felt a nuzzle at the top of her head. "It's all right. You're tired. I understand."

"I don't. I'm trying to ask you, why are you in my _bed?_"

"How else am I supposed to spend time with you while you're sleeping?"

She rolled slightly, onto her legs so she could get up off the bed, though his wing was folded over her body, making it hard to manuever. She didn't remember Discord's feathered wing being big enough to do that. "I, uh, this, this isn't a good idea. I don't think, uh, I don't think this is really, uh, appropriate..."

"You have sleepovers with your friends all the time."

"They're _mares_."

"Oh, sex discrimination now? I thought you ponies were beyond all that."

"It's, uh, it's just _weird_, Discord. I'm a mare, and you're, well, I guess you're not a stallion but you're _male_, so..."

"Would it reassure you if I told you I was only interested in my own species?"

"Is that true?"

"Not even slightly, but I'll lie about it if it will make you feel better."

Fluttershy stiffened with a tiny "eep!" Discord made an annoyed noise and raised his head. "Fluttershy, weren't we just over this tonight? I have absolutely no _inappropriate_ intentions toward you, any more than you'd have toward Angel. Wait, if you do have inappropriate intentions toward your bunny rabbit, don't tell me. Let me keep my illusions."

"I don't!"

"Then we're good." Discord lowered his head again. "Unless you're so overwhelmed with lust for me that you're afraid my proximity may overwhelm your common sense, I think it's fairly safe to say both our virtues are entirely safe from one another. There's exactly one pony on this planet I have _ever_ had any such intentions as you're implying toward, and you're not her." He started to get up. "But I should have known this 'friendship' thing only goes so far. You don't want me next to you while you're sleeping, because of some bizarre rule of social propriety, _fine_-"

"Wait... you don't have to get up... were you even sleeping? I thought you didn't sleep."

"I don't. I was watching you sleep."

"Isn't that boring?"

"You'd have been mad at me if I woke you up." He sighed. "Even I can want peace and quiet on occasion. Am I not allowed to want to lie still for a bit?"

"Well, of course you can, but... why are you in my bed?"

She felt Discord shrug. "You're warm."

He could manufacture clothing, or fire, or weather conditions at will. He could be any temperature he wanted. He wasn't here because she was warm.

And then Fluttershy realized, and felt embarrassed that she had taken this long to figure it out, when it had actually been the first thing he'd said. Admittedly, it seemed out of character for Discord for that to have been anything other than a joke... but he didn't sleep, he didn't need somepony to keep him warm, and he wasn't interested in her romantically, so the only possible explanation that made any sense for why he'd been lying in bed snuggled against her, holding her like she'd have held Angel Bunny, was that he'd wanted somepony to cuddle. He was Discord; he was never going to admit that and make it sound like he was telling the truth, but he was perfectly capable of telling her the truth in a way that made it sound like a joke so she wouldn't realize it was the truth. "I'm sorry, Discord," she said, settling back down on the bed. "You just startled me. You can lay next to me if you want."

He settled back down against her back again, his tail curled around her legs and the end of it twitching, his wing folded over hers. "It's all right? You're not going to panic and run screaming out of bed again?"

"I... I didn't really run screaming..."

"Oh, but it was close. You were seriously considering it."

"It's just... you're not really someone I'd expect to want to cuddle anypony."

"I'm large. I contain multitudes. If I never get to do anything that seems completely out of character, then I'm predictable, and how could I ever bear to be predictable?"

Now that her racing heart was slowing down and she was relaxing again, she realized that this was actually surprisingly comfortable. Discord had moved her so that her head was pillowed against his chest, where his brown fur was thicker and softer than the gray fur on his neck, and her back was snuggled against his underbelly. Since he was much, much longer than she was, and obviously much more flexible, he'd bent himself into a semicircle around her, his feathered wing covering her like a down blanket (and yes, now that she was paying attention, it _was_ much bigger than usual... as if he'd enlarged it precisely so he could fold it over her. He'd also reversed the positions of his forelimbs, so now his lion's paw was on the same side as his feathered wing.) He was very, very warm, almost as hot as Spike, but the fur distributed the warmth better than Spike's scales did so he felt more like an enchanted heated blanket and less like, well, a dragon.

Fluttershy giggled. She _was_ small enough in comparison to Discord that she was practically a teddy bear to him. Then she thought about the reasons why she sometimes slept with Angel Bunny, and felt troubled again. "Are you sad?" she asked softly, remembering the discussion about his family.

He chuckled. "No. I'm not sad." The tufted lion's tail end of his tail swished restlessly for a moment before going still. "Go back to sleep, Fluttershy."

"I just want to know you're okay."

"I'm just peachy."

Fluttershy sighed. She didn't believe him. But whatever it was that was bothering him, he was plainly not willing to open up about it. Maybe he'd be willing to talk about it later, in the morning; for right now, if the only thing she could do for him was be a warm body to cuddle for comfort, she could do that.

His heartbeat was loud. And _fast._ Surprisingly so for a large creature who was lying down. "Does your heart always sound like that?" Fluttershy murmured.

"Like what?"

"So fast. Like – like a foal, or a bird, or a bunny rabbit, but... like it's racing."

"Stop trying to dissect me with your brain, Fluttershy. I swear you're as bad as Sparky sometimes."

"I just worry about you." Large creatures had big hearts, physically, and therefore, slow heartbeats. A fast heartbeat in a large creature usually meant adrenaline. Fight or flight or meet or mate; it was the sound of arousal or excitement or anger or fear. Discord was uncharacteristically quiet and still at the moment, so it was very unlikely that he was angry or excited, and given his indignation at her fear that he might see her in a romantic light or be making advances on her, it seemed unlikely that he was aroused; it was _possible,_ given how he'd mocked the very concept of friendship up until the moment she made him realize he needed it, but Fluttershy thought she knew Discord well enough to know that if he wanted her and didn't want to admit it, he would be making fun of her rather than being indignant.

Was he _scared_ of something?

She didn't know how to bring it up. She knew all about being scared, oh yes, and she herself wasn't too proud to admit it... fear was her greatest weakness, something too powerful for her to hide or pretend not to feel. But she had friends who would hide it if they could. Rainbow Dash and Rarity were both very proud ponies, in different ways, and neither of _them_ would easily admit to fear. And Discord was so arrogant, and so powerful, and so rarely faced with anything _to_ fear, and so new to the concept of friendship and the idea of confiding feelings in anyone. If she said anything to him, she was afraid he would immediately throw up defenses, make a joke, pretend there was nothing bothering him. She had to wait for him to come to her.

She lay against his side, eyes open in the darkness, trying to be there for him, trying not to be lulled back into sleep by warm soft fur against her face and neck and light fluffy feathers spread over her. It was hard, almost too hard. She was on the verge of falling asleep again when she heard a quiet voice in the darkness murmur, "Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy startled slightly – since she _had_ been almost asleep, and his voice, though quieter than she'd ever heard from him, was still louder than the silence of the room had been. "Uh—yes?"

Another moment of silence, during which she wondered if she'd dreamed him speaking. And then he said, "You're mortal."

Well, obviously. "Uh... yeah?"

"Do you... you must, I'm sure, but I never thought about... do you think about dying?"

"I guess every mortal does," Fluttershy said, "but, you know, we grow up knowing we're going to die someday and it'd be silly to worry about it all the time, so we don't think about it too much." Was that what this was about? Had it just sunk in that he'd made friends with someone who'd be dead in an eyeblink by his standards? "Discord, are you worrying about me? That's so sweet!" She scooted herself back so she could get her own forelimb up over his neck to hug him.

"That's not... exactly..."

"You mustn't worry about it," she said. "I know it must bother you to think about a friend dying, when you're immortal and everything, but death is a part of life and it's just natural. It's just the way things are. But I'm still a young pony and I promise you I'll be here for you for a good long while, okay?"

He sighed. "You have an entirely too flattering picture of me, I'm afraid. I'm not... well, I do, but... that's not what I was... you know what, never mind."

"You can talk to me about anything, you know that? That's what friends are for."

"I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"You open your mouth and start talking, silly, that's how to do it."

Again he was silent for a minute. Finally he said, "No, I was right the first time. It's nothing, Fluttershy, don't worry about me. Just go back to sleep."

"But if something's bothering you or frightening you... a burden shared with a friend is a burden cut in half."

"Is it? In my experience it's a burden doubled."

Fluttershy sighed. "But how much experience do you have with having friends?"

"Well, it's not like I've _never_ had any friends before, ever, in all of eternity."

That wasn't what he'd said that day with the ice skates, but she let it go. Discord was both prone to exaggerating the facts and downplaying them depending on how he felt at the moment; maybe he'd had friends once upon a time and he'd said she was his only friend ever because of how long it had been, or maybe he'd never had friends before now and he'd just decided he no longer wanted to admit to that now that he was willing to admit he liked having friends. "All of eternity was a long time ago, though, wasn't it?"

"I suppose it was."

More silence. She finally said, "Did you... did you want to talk about it?"

"You know what? No." He lifted his head slightly and spoke sharply. "What I _want_ is to lie down in peace and quiet and pretend that nothing is wrong. Can I do that? Am I _allowed_ to not spill my guts and blather on about my _feelings_ about something that neither you nor I have the power to change? Can I just possibly simply lie here and not think about it? If that's _quite_ all right with you?"

Fluttershy trembled. "I... I'm sorry... I didn't mean..."

Discord sighed. "Fluttershy. I'm not angry with you. I just... don't want to talk. Can I just... be here, without having to talk about things?"

"Of course you can," she said. "I... I just thought... maybe you would like to?"

"Not really, but thanks for the thought." He settled his head back down on her bed.

"You know... you know if you change your mind... you can always talk to me, right?"

"Yeah. I know." His lion paw tightened slightly around her, pulling her closer. "Just... go back to sleep, okay? You're a pony, you need your sleep."

"Okay."

She didn't actually intend to do that just yet, not when she was worried for a friend who wouldn't talk to her about whatever was obviously bothering him; she was hoping if she stayed awake, maybe Discord would change his mind and open up to her about whatever was on his mind. But his rapid heartbeat slowed, turning deep and regular, and his breathing evened out. Probably the only things about him that were ever in a consistent rhythm for any length of time. His wing was surprisingly light and fluffy, and his fur was soft and his body warm. Lulled by comfort, Fluttershy slipped back into sleep again.

When she woke, he wasn't there, and there was no evidence he'd ever been. There was a note on the cabinet with no letters on it, just an imprint of lips, and when she went over to inspect it the lips spoke in Discord's voice. "Gone swimming! Come to Mane Street in Ponyville if you want to join in!" it said cheerfully, and then the lips vanished and it was nothing but a piece of paper.

There was no swimming pool anywhere near Mane Street. Fluttershy sighed. Probably she had to go check this out, as Discord's more-or-less supervisor to make sure he didn't do anything terrible. She fed all her animals, left a note on her door so ponies with injured pets would know where to find her, and headed to Mane Street.


	6. Pool Party

Mane Street was a swimming pool.

Well, it wasn't completely a swimming pool. Discord had divided the street, so both lanes of traffic were as wide as they had previously been, plenty of room for a pony to walk even if she was pulling a cart. He seemed to have bent space somehow to do it, because when she tried walking in the alley behind the buildings they were exactly the same distance away from the other buildings that they'd always been, and all the other streets were still straight, and when she looked in the shops they had the same dimensions they'd always had. But the lanes now bent widely around a gigantic median ellipse occupied by a big swimming pool. There was a fence around the pool, but it was the kind made of metal links that you could easily see through. Pinkie Pie and at least a dozen other ponies, including two elderly retired mares who were always giving Fluttershy extra vegetables for her animals, were splashing in the water. Other ponies were lying on pool chairs, taking in the sun. Tentatively, Fluttershy pushed the gate open and entered the pool area.

"FLUTTERSHY!" Pinkie jumped up in her face... which given that 10 seconds ago Fluttershy had seen her swimming, was a little weird, but that was just Pinkie. "Did Discord tell you what he did?"

"He, uh, he said he was going swimming on Mane Street..."

"He made a _pool_ for everypony! With really awesome slides, come on, you have to slide on the slides, they're like a roller coaster or something!" Pinkie tugged at Fluttershy.

"I, uh, I'd really... I'm kind of scared of roller coasters..."

Pinkie let go of Fluttershy. "Oh. Yeah. Right. Haha, I forgot about that! Well, at least you can go swimming, right? I mean, the water isn't even deep, except in the deep end where the slides are! Oh, and did you have any breakfast? Because I told Applejack and the Cakes to come set up food vending here and I gotta go back and help the Cakes but Applejack's already here and she has fritters and _apple pancakes!_ Apple pancakes for breakfast! And I told Discord not to make any food right now so the vendors can sell stuff but he said then that I have to throw a party tonight so he can make food because of course you never sell the food at a party so it won't cut into any vendor sales whereas if he made the food _now_ then the vendors couldn't sell anything and that would be bad for the Cakes and Applejack!"

"Where is Discord now, actually?"

"I actually don't know! I wonder if I have to go play hide and seek with him! Or maybe he's at the bottom of the pool in the deep end! He's been doing that and then going boo to the ponies who go down the slide and I actually wish he wouldn't keep doing it because it's kind of mean even though it's also funny, but he doesn't know the ponies here well enough to know who likes to get a little scare and who's gonna be totally freaked out so maybe you can talk to him?"

"Oh, but I can't go down to the deep end of the pool..."

"Well, I'll check to see if he's there and if he is I'll tell him to go talk to you! He wanted you to come but he didn't want to wake you up early and is it true that he took you to the Moon last night? Because normally I wouldn't believe a thing like that but if it's Discord, sometimes he says things that are true that nopony's gonna believe because he thinks it's funny to do that, which it kind of is sometimes, and he _could_ go to the Moon if he wanted to but on the other hand sometimes he says things that aren't true because he thinks that's funny too!"

She wasn't sure she wanted to tell Pinkie about going into space just yet. "We didn't go to the Moon, no..."

"Oh, okay! So I have to get some peanut butter because I told him I will dump a jar of peanut butter over his head if he's lying to me, but he has to get out of the pool first because peanut butter in a pool? That's just gross!"

"Pinkie, please don't dump peanut butter on Discord's head just because of something I said..."

Pinkie slowed down from her usual manic bounciness slightly. "It's not mean, Fluttershy. He likes that kind of teasing. I've been trying to teach him he's gotta know his audience. Some ponies like the physical comedy and the slapstick like that, like he does, and some like it but only from their best friends, and some don't like it at all, and you have to know who's going to like it before you do it because if they hate it, that's just not funny. He's had a hard time getting it, but I think knowing you is helping a lot because he really doesn't want to upset you and you're a lot different than he is. I don't think he's used to caring what ponies who think differently than he does think about, well, anything."

"Well, uh, there aren't really many ponies who _don't_ think differently than he does..."

"Yeah, so that there is a big part of his problem." Pinkie grinned. "But I think he's starting to get it. A little bit. At least, when I tell him a joke is mean, he doesn't usually repeat it. And I think that's because he knows you don't like it when he's mean." She flopped down in a chair. "Can I tell you something, Fluttershy?"

"Sure, anything!"

"Peanut butter tastes really horrible with mane in it!"

Fluttershy blinked. "Oh... ok?"

"Wait, no, that isn't what I wanted to say." Pinkie put her hoof to her chin, lost in thought. "Oh yeah! I wanted to say, there's two kinds of ponies who pull pranks. There's bullies and pranksters. Bullies, they pull a prank on you 'cause they want you to cry. The funny part, for them, isn't the joke itself, it's that it hurts you. So they don't like it when you prank them back and they get mad if you come up with some clever way to dodge the prank. But pranksters, for them the funny part is the unexpectedosity of it." Fluttershy didn't think that was a word, but Pinkie didn't let her get in a word edgewise to say so. "So if you prank a prankster, and it's a good prank, they laugh. And if you do something unexpected to dodge out of their prank, they laugh at that too. It's not about who got hurt, it's about it basically being _funny_."

Fluttershy wasn't a big fan of pranks of any kind, but she could at least follow this logic when she thought about ponies like Rainbow Dash pulling pranks, or Pinkie herself. "Okay..."

"So here's the thing. Discord laughs if you prank him."

"I know, " Fluttershy said.

"Well, we didn't, right? Before the Princess asked you to reform him we didn't know that because we didn't _do_ any pranks on him, we fought him, and no one who's _fighting_ is gonna be glad to lose 'cause that's when it's serious and you gotta win. But you thought you could reform him like she asked. And I didn't, because he's a big meanie and I thought he was a bully, even though I can forgive a lot for chocolate milk rain, but you can't reform a bully, they just either grow out of it or you have to scare 'em out of picking on you. But bullies don't laugh when you prank them. So you were right all along." She got up. "There's two parts of not being a _mean_ prankster, and that's knowing what other ponies think is mean, and _caring_ about not being mean. And Dissy's got a long long way to go with the knowing part but I think we are actually making some progress on the caring part! A little bit."

"I'm really glad to hear that."

"So I'm gonna go back and help the Cakes! Applejack's got a really long line over there and I bet it would help a lot with the line if there was another vendor for breakfast! Bye!"

As Pinkie bounced off, Fluttershy murmured, "But... you were going to help me find Discord if he's at the bottom of the pool..."

The water by the side of the pool heaved up as if a sea serpent was rising out of it. Fluttershy shrieked and jumped backward, sliding on the wet concrete and falling on her rump. "Ow!"

"Fluttershy, it's just _me_," the very large draconequus with a tail that looked a whole lot like a sea serpent tail said, exasperatedly. "You were just looking for me! How do you get startled when the being you're looking for pops up out of the place you were going to look for him in?"

"I'm sorry..."

"Never mind," Discord said. "I'd thought that living with me might have given you a _slightly_ higher setting on your Startle-O-Meter than that, but I suppose not." He leaned on the edge of the pool, the elbow of his paw bent and the paw itself supporting his head. "I take it you got my message?"

"Uh, yes, I did."

"Splendid! Come dive in!"

"I was, actually I was just going to look for you and make sure everything was okay... I have to get back and feed the animals breakfast and everything..."

"No, you don't." Discord snapped his talon. "Problem solved."

"Did... did you just... what did you do?"

"I fed them! Every single lost soul living on or in or around your property has a nice healthy breakfast in front of them now. Have _you_ had breakfast?"

"Discord, you didn't feed them all cake, did you?"

He sighed. "I actually know exactly what you feed your animals, Fluttershy. If I was going to feed them cake it would be while you were there to see the joke. I'm trying to save you work so you can come swimming with me. And you didn't answer my question about breakfast."

"Oh, no, I haven't yet, so I was going to go over and ask Applejack..."

"But just look at that line!" Discord snapped again, and Applejack suddenly appeared by the side of the pool.

"Tarnation, Discord! Ah'm in the middle of frying a fritter and it's gonna burn! What the hay do you want!"

"Consider your fritter fried. I want you to make Fluttershy breakfast."

"Oh, no!" Fluttershy put a hoof to her face, deeply embarrassed. "Discord, I was going to go stand on the line! You just pulled Applejack away from her kiosk!"

"Pretty sure her giant lug of a brother can handle the orders for the few seconds it takes for you to give her _your_ order."

"That ain't how we do it around here, Discord. There's ponies already in line."

"So you would prioritize _strangers_ with _bits_ over your dear, dear friend here?" Discord slithered up out of the pool and pulled Fluttershy into a sideways hug faster than anypony that big ought to be able to move. "Look at this sweet face. Don't you think your _friend_ deserves breakfast?"

"It's all _right_, Discord, I'm ok with getting on line—"

"Fluttershy may be first in mah heart of all the ponies eatin' mah food for breakfast, Discord, but Ah still can't let her jump to the front of the line just for being mah friend, 'cause that just ain't fair to all the other ponies who're standing in line. If you're gonna sell goods to ponies, you can't play favorites to your friends or they're gonna be the only customers you get."

Fluttershy was bright red. "It's all right, I don't have a problem with the line—"

"Well I think it's just ridiculous that the _magic_ of _friendship_ can't even get Fluttershy a fritter on a timely basis. For shame. Do _I_ have to feed her? Am _I_ the only friend Fluttershy has who cares that she's hungry?"

"You don't know a darned thing about retail and sales, do ya?"

"Not in the slightest." Discord flopped down on his belly on the concrete around the pool, grinning cheerily.

"If you get your customers mad, like maybe if you spend ten minutes arguin' with an ignorant draconequus instead of takin' their orders, or if you play favorites, you ain't gonna be able to make a living in mah business. Not that you'd know anything about makin' an honest living, either."

"Guilty as charged. Completely ignorant of the subject." His grin got bigger.

"Well, Ah'll give you some advice for free, if you ever find yourself needin' to? Don't go into sales. Yer pony skills are appallin' and you're likely to scare half yer customers away just with how you look, and the other half of them with how you act. You need good pony skills to get ahead in a sales-based business."

Discord lost his smile completely. "I'll be sure to keep it in mind, in the _vanishingly_ unlikely event that it should ever prove to be relevant," he said sourly.

Applejack looked over at the line. "Fluttershy, Ah tell you what. Ah'll take your order now—"

"But that's unfair to all the ponies in line!"

"No, it ain't, 'cause Ah won't start cookin' it until that guy—" she pointed at the last stallion in the line—"gives me his order. That way it'll be just like if you _did_ stand on the line. You won't go afore anypony else who was supposed to go afore you, but Ah'll already have your order so you won't have to stand in the line." She turned and glared at Discord. "And then this useless lump a'chaos here can let you know when your order's done cookin' so you don't have to come over to the booth till it's ready for you to get it."

"I am a very useful lump of chaos, I'll have you know."

"I—I guess that's fair. I just wanted a couple of your apple pancakes?"

"That's no problem, Fluttershy, no problem. Ah'll just head over there and take orders till Ah get to that guy."

"Make me one too," Discord said offhandedly.

Applejack glared at him. "You gonna buy one off me? You got any bits?"

Discord put on a pair of sunglasses he hadn't had a moment ago. "Applejack, do you _really_ want to ask me a question whose answer might end up being, 'No, I actually don't, perhaps I need to earn some,' which results in me setting up a kiosk selling exotic breakfast treats right next to yours, given that I am not only capable of creating an infinite supply of much tastier food than yours, but I can make the booth, the equipment _and_ the perky salesponies to move the product, with a snap?" He sat up. "Celestia won't let me make bits, but she's never restricted me from making anything I could _sell_ for bits. And while I'm sure you're correct that I should never personally attempt to sell anything, you have no idea how many desperate salesponies are out there looking for a job who'd be willing to staff my kiosk in a heartbeat."

"Please stop arguing," Fluttershy pleaded.

"So what you want from me's a free pancake."

"Well, they say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this is breakfast."

"Even though you can make any food ya want appear just like that."

"That's right."

"I'll pay for his pancake, Applejack," Fluttershy said.

Both Discord and Applejack looked at her at the same time and said, "You will not!" And then glared at each other.

"But it's the right thing, you ought to get paid..."

Applejack sighed. "Even though this varmint does _not_ deserve a pancake, any pancake, and especially not a free pancake, Ah will make him one so we can quit arguin' about this and Ah can get back to mah line of customers. You _ain't_ gonna pay for him, Fluttershy. And it ain't because Ah'm afraid of you competing with mah booth, Discord, it's because Ah don't wanna upset Fluttershy." She started toward her booth, and then turned back. "Although, if your exotic breakfast treats are so much better than mah cooking, why don't you make yourself one?"

"I'm trying to share a friendship experience with Fluttershy," Discord said, a comically innocent expression plastered on his face. "You know, sharing a meal together, isn't that supposed to be one of those bonding moments? Or am I mixing up breakfast and rubber cement?"

"Could you please stop..." Fluttershy whispered.

"You lie like a rug, Discord. You just want _me_ to make you a free pancake."

"I could have asked for a sammich."

Applejack squared her shoulders. "Well, all right then, 'cause Ah just thought of somethin'. Ah was wrong to say you don't deserve a free pancake. You made this swimming pool and gave mah family the opportunity to run a booth here; it ain't market day, so we wouldn't be sellin' _any_ apples or apple product right this minute if it weren't for you, and you didn't ask for rent. So Ah'll make you _two_ pancakes, with syrup, as rent for the pool space we got the booth on, so they ain't free pancakes, they're pancakes you got comin' to ya fair and square. We good now?"

"Wonderful," Discord said. "Enjoy your fritter frying." He snapped his talon again, and Fluttershy saw Applejack reappear behind the booth counter.

"Why did you want a pancake?" Fluttershy asked.

"Eh, no reason. Come on in and swim, Flutters!"

"Oh, no, I really couldn't, right now..."

"If you wait until after you eat you'll have to wait an hour after that," he caroled. "Come in while the going's good now."

"Oh, no, I just... I mean maybe later if I can ease into the water, but..."

He sighed deeply, and then made puppy dog eyes at her. "Could you at least come give me a backrub? It's getting bad again."

"Sure!" Giving comfort and medical treatment was much more familiar ground than swimming pools. "There are plenty of pool chairs, but I don't see any big enough for you to lay down in. Where would you like to lay down?"

And then there was sudden disorientation, and vertigo, and then she was standing on a rock which was _rocking_, like a boat. "Eep!" Fluttershy flapped her wings, trying to regain her footing. "Discord, we're in the middle of the pool!"

"Yes, I know, I teleported us here."

"But we're in the _pool!_"

"Don't worry, this rock is very stable."

"No it's not! It's going back and forth... Don't you think so?"

"Well, of course it is, Fluttershy." Discord was sprawled out on the rock, on his belly, limbs stretched wide, wings lying straight and flat draped over his back and sides, and his tail uncoiled. The tip of his tail hung into the water and his nose was barely an inch from the waves; it was a long rock for a long creature to stretch out on. "What else would you expect? It's floating."

"We're on a floating rock in the middle of the swimming pool? Why not a boat or something?"

"That's what I wanted to know!" Pinkie Pie yelled, jumping up from the water and leaning on the rock with both forelimbs. "I said what about a nice inner tube, and he says—"

"When was the last time you saw a dragon in an inner tube?" Discord asked.

"Yeah, that's exactly what he said!" Pinkie turned to Discord. "And the answer is, last summer when Spike came to the beach with us."

"Let me rephrase, when was the last time you saw a dragon who didn't think he was a pony in an inner tube?"

"But you're not even a dragon, you're a dragon pony goat lion eagle bat thing!"

"The technical term is draconequus."

"But that just means dragon pony! What about all the other parts? Are you ashamed of the other parts, huh? Didn't want to have a word that had all the other parts in it?"

"Well, if I called myself a draconaquileoequus, it would be a bit of a mouthful, don't you think?"

"And it would also be missing the part about the bat and the goat!"

"The point is, I'm part dragon, therefore I'm basking on a rock. Not an inner tube. Don't you have a booth to set up?"

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot!" Pinkie dove back into the water.

Discord sighed. "There's chaos, and then there's complete pointless noise, and sometimes I think Pinkie doesn't know where the line is. Or possibly that there even is a line."

Fluttershy smiled. By now, she had figured out how to balance properly on the floating rock. "Why don't you tell me where it hurts?"

"Everywhere," Discord moaned dramatically.

"Big baby," Fluttershy teased, and knelt down next to him, running her hooves over his back. She could easily feel the knots in his muscles. "Where does it hurt the worst?"

"Tuesday?"

"Never mind, I'll just do the whole thing."

She dug her hooves into a particularly tense spot. Discord gasped. "Fluttershy. You are an angel of mercy. There need to be – ohhh – there need to be choirs of little foals in white gowns singing in harmony about how wonderful you – oh yes please right there under the wing, no, the bat wing, oh, that is _incredible._" He closed his eyes. "I'm going to pretend that I'm a creature that sleeps now. Agh. Do you think it would help if I traded in my skeleton for a new model?"

"I kind of don't think so? Because you can never get rid of it just by shapeshifting and then turning back, and you'd think that would work. Maybe if you went around being a little more symmetrical it would help?"

"Blasphemy. Tell Rarity to shave her mane, it's more likely."

"Well, if Rarity's mane was hurting all the time because it was too long... but I don't think any different form you have is going to be any different."

"What if I was an invertebrate? Then my back couldn't hurt."

"You turned yourself into a whole flock of dragonflies and it didn't help in the long run."

"Well, the back I didn't have when I was a flock of dragonflies didn't hurt while I was a flock of dragonflies."

"Do you want to go around being a flock of dragonflies all the time?"

"Not really, no. Ohhh. Earth sun and sky how are you _finding_ these things, I didn't even know how badly that one hurt until aggghhh yes there."

"I'm just feeling for where the muscles don't feel right."

"I'm not sure any of them feel right." He sighed, and then lifted his head, tensing up and ruining a lot of her work. "Oh, hey, breakfast's ready!" He snapped the talon without removing it from its position outstretched across the rock, and Applejack was suddenly standing on the other side of the rock, a serving platter tied around her neck with two plates on it. She wobbled.

"Discord! What the hay are you—" She looked down at Fluttershy. "Okay. Tell me Ah'm not seein' this."

"Seeing what?"

"Fluttershy, what the _hay_ are you doin' down there?"

"I'm giving him a back rub." Discord moaned in a combination of agony and relief as she found another one of the really bad spots, this one above his tailbone. "His back really hurts him."

"Ah'll just bet," Applejack said slowly. "Hay, you! Loser!"

Discord opened his eyes and turned his head. "Are you addressing _me?_"

"You mind tellin' me why the hay a guy who can _take his eyeballs outta his head_ and roll'em on the ground, turn into a hoop and hula around a pony, and shapechange into pretty much anything, needs to get a _backrub_ from his _mare_ friend? 'Cause Ah am callin' bull puckey."

Fluttershy flushed red. "It's not like that, Applejack!"

"Well, Fluttershy, Ah'm sure you don't think so. Ah'm positive this varmint _told_ you he was in a lot of pain and needed his back rubbed. But in mah experience, a stallion askin' a mare for a back rub, well, maybe he hurt his back with a lotta hard work, but if he ain't done any hard work a day in his life? Or if he can take off his head and put it back on again and other crazy stuff? Ah'm thinkin' he's lookin' to get something else rubbed, if you know what Ah mean."

"Applejack!" Fluttershy was completely mortified, the worse so because Discord was snickering. "It's not like that at all! It's psychosomatic pain!"

"Psychosomatic? You been spendin' too much time with Twilight again?"

"It means pain in the mind making pain in the body," Fluttershy explained.

"Ah know what it means, it just don't sound like the kinda word you use all the time."

"Fluttershy thinks it's rude to just say my pain is all in my head," Discord said, half-growling. "And Fluttershy, if I wanted to whine to somepony who turned me into a stone statue about what that's done to me, I'd have done it to somepony who cared. Which I did. Which was you. _Not_ Applejack."

"But she was acting like—I couldn't let her think we were – or that you were the kind of stallion who would—no!"

"For the record," Discord said, closing his eyes again, "if I were looking for a special somepony to give me a different sort of rub, I'd be in your Princess's bedroom right now. She totally wants me."

"You would _what?_"

"You are a filthy liar, Discord, and someone oughta wash your mouth out with _soap._"

"Which Princess do you even mean?" Fluttershy asked frantically.

Still with his eyes closed, Discord was grinning broadly. "Oh, I suppose I misspoke, it's so hard to keep track of the time. Celestia's _working_ right now. I'd have to wait till evening for the happy ending."

"Ah'm gonna shove these apple pancakes in your _ears_ 'cause your lyin' mouth ain't good enough for mah pancakes."

"Discord, that joke is really tasteless," Fluttershy said sternly. "You just can't talk about the Princesses that way. Besides, Princess Celestia is still in mourning for Prince Trueblood! She never marries a new husband until the old one's been dead at least fifty years."

Discord chortled. "What part of 'Celestia totally wants me' makes you think she wants to _marry_ me? Do I look like the sort of colt you bring home to your mama? Celestia only marries the _good_ colts, the knights and paladins, the Colt Scouts, the stallions of impeccable virtue and niceness and _boringness_. I'm the kind of guy she hides in her bedroom when Luna's too busy with the moon to notice and everypony else is asleep."

"She does _not!_"

"Didn't you ever wonder how she got custody of a baby dragon? Spike's dad, well, I'll just bet he thought he'd died and gone to Dragon Heaven when she showed up in _his_ cave."

"The Princess is not Spike's mother!" Fluttershy said frantically. Applejack was simply spluttering, turning redder and redder.

"'Course not, Spike's a dragon. Fellow was _married_ to a dragon mare. To be absolutely fair, I think his blushing bride and her tragic demise shortly after laying Spike occurred a few hundred years after Celestia got down and dirty with him, but you know your Princess, she's all about the magic of friendship. Especially the friendship with benefits."

Applejack kicked Discord, hard, with her front hooves. "Ah am gonna buck you to Fillydelphia if you don't stop with the lies about the Princess. You are _not_ her coltfriend!"

"Never said I was. She made it _awfully_ clear that the invitation was open any time I wanted, but you know... she's so _white._ Practically glows in the dark. Doesn't that seem just a little, I don't know, embarrassing? I mean, most ponies prefer a bit of shade for their intimacy, hides all the little imperfections, you know, and here's the BLAZING LIGHT OF THE SUN demanding that you buck her like a—"

At this point, Fluttershy shoved Discord off the rock before he really could provoke Applejack into bucking him to Fillydelphia. He splashed into the water with a cry of surprise, and sank.

"I apologize for Discord, Applejack," Fluttershy said, breathing hard. "I embarrassed him when I told you about why his back hurts, so he must have decided to get back at the both of us by saying all those mean things about Princess Celestia."

Applejack shook her head. "It ain't that they're mean. If they were true, there'd be no shame in the Princess bein' a little xeno, if that's how she swings. Ah mean, she's the Princess, she's thousands of years old, Ah ain't gonna tell her she can't have a dragon warm her up on a cold night if she wanted. But they're _lies_, and Discord's just sayin' them 'cause he thinks we _would_ be ashamed of our Princess for bein' a bit xeno, like the hay it matters who she loves, long as it's love. Ah mean, maybe the part about Spike's dad is even true. But there is no way Princess Celestia would give the time of day to _Discord._" She sighed. "Ah shouldn't let him get to me, but he tells me mean lies after he made me a mean liar, it's just like wavin' a red flag to a bull."

"Well, we're not racing bulls. Discord can wave a red flag or a checkered flag or any kind of flag he wants, but we shouldn't let him get to us. He's just playing. And I should've known he'd be embarrassed for you to know about the psychosomatic thing."

"Ah'm not even sure Ah understand."

Fluttershy peered into the water. Discord had apparently swum off entirely and was now pretending to be a climbing structure for the little foals in the kiddie pool. Which actually might help his back some. "He has psychosomatic pain. He says he's pulling against stone that isn't there, all the time, and it wrenches his back. He can use his powers to fix it, but his powers are controlled by his mind and it's his mind doing it to him, so it never works very well."

"Huh. Wouldn't've thought bein' turned into a statue could actually mess up a _spirit_ enough to keep hurtin' his back."

"He had a really hard time admitting it to me in the first place. Discord doesn't like to admit to needing help with anything." She sighed. "I wish you hadn't said that stuff, Applejack. I mean, I know you were just looking out for me and I really appreciate it, but Discord isn't interested in me like that. He's more like a really annoying but also kind of sweet older brother."

"Ah just don't want him takin' advantage of you, Fluttershy," Applejack said. "And it's true, stallions ask mares for back rubs or offer 'em up when they're thinkin' about, you know. Getting with her."

"Yes, but stallions don't ask _me_ for back rubs, but sometimes bears do, and one time a monkey, so trust me. Discord's a good friend to me, really, but, but I'm not really xeno, I mean I love all creatures but not _that_ way, so really there's nothing there except friendship. He might as well be a mare. A mare with a very stalliony voice." She giggled.

"Well, just 'cause you ain't xeno don't mean he ain't."

"He says he is, actually, Which I guess is good for him, because are there even any other draconequuses? I asked him about his family but they're all spirits and they have different kinds of bodies and the one who used to be his fillyfriend is a dragon so I guess he has to be xeno or he'd never find someone to love?"

"Ah think he's got bigger problems findin' someone to love than what species they are, Fluttershy," Applejack said. "Think first he'd need to figger out how to not be a total jerk. And if you know he's xeno, how are you so sure he's not goin' all creepy on you?"

"I just know," Fluttershy said. She thought of bringing up the fact that she had slept against Discord's flank for half the night last night and he had been a perfect gentlestallion, cuddling against her but not doing anything misconstruable as sexual, the whole time. But she thought Applejack might turn that one around and take it as evidence for her side too.

Discord rematerialized on the rock, sitting this time. "Why are the two of you so obsessed with my sex life?"

"Ah _ain't_, Discord. Ah just wanna make sure you ain't gonna hurt Fluttershy."

Discord sighed, heavily. "As if I can't break her heart into tiny little pieces _without_ romance being involved? Or the other way around? I'll never comprehend why you ponies think friendship _with_ sex is somehow so much more fraught with peril than friendship _without_ sex. I do not desire Fluttershy. She is a very beautiful little pony and my dear friend and someday when some stallion comes calling to her door I will probably turn him into a newt unless he proves _he_ won't hurt her, but she is much too young for me and I am frankly getting somewhat offended at the implication that I'm such a cradle robber. What, you think I'm desperate?"

Applejack shrugged. "Ain't seein' you gettin' with much of anypony else, and it ain't likely given your history. Also that somepony would have to be _real_ xeno to be into you."

Discord smirked. "There is actually no shortage of ponies who are really, really xeno, Applejoke. If I wanted a lover, I could find one. I don't. I have a friend. Right now, at this stage of my existence, I find that preferable. But I promise you this, o Element of Honesty, if I do hook up with a pony who's got a taste for extreme xeno, I'll give you a blow by blow description afterward in graphic detail, since you seem to be so _very_ interested in my love life."

Applejack shook her head. "There's honesty, and then there's TMI, and then there's the brain bleach Ah do not have enough of to get that image out of mah head, Discord. Please shut the buck up and eat your pancakes. They've gotten all cold."

Discord grinned at her and flicked his talon, and she reappeared at the booth, sans the two plates. Fluttershy sat down with her fork and knife, and found that the pancakes were as warm as if they'd just come off the grill... that one was probably Discord's doing. Discord ate his like they were flies and he was a frog, shooting his long snake tongue out to stick to a piece of pancake and then pulling it back, which was just totally weird enough to be not quite gross but more like watching an animal eat.

"You shouldn't get so upset when anypony hears about your problems," she said to him softly, returning to work on his back after finishing her pancake. "We just all want to help you."

"As if," Discord muttered.


	7. The Quality of One's Enemies

By the time Twilight was sure her answer was reasonably comprehensive, it was night time. She headed out , planning to go to Fluttershy's house to find Discord, since summoning him by calling his name seemed just... creepy. Almost immediately, she observed that it was far too light out.

The moon was up. The sun was down. Where was all the light coming from?

Possibly from those three extremely bright glowing red orbs hovering over the center of Ponyville?

Twilight followed the light to Mane Street, turned the corner, and stopped in shock.

Everything that was supposed to be on Mane Street, was. Each lane of the street was the same width it had always been. But now, impossibly, the lanes of the street split and bent into a circle, and in the center of the circle, there was a gigantic fenced-in swimming pool with multiple open gates, in which there seemed to be a raucous pool party going on. The three red orbs floated over the pool, leaving the night sky still mostly visible but lighting the area of the pool. It was bright enough to be almost like daylight, but the red light made all the colors strange and it didn't blot out the night sky like actual daylight would have.

As Twilight approached one of the gates to the pool, Pinkie Pie rushed up to her, dragged her up onto her hind feet and started pulling her with a forehoof clasped around Twilight's foreleg. "Twilight it's so great you're finally done for the day and you can come SWIMMING! You should see the swimming pool Discord made, it's so awesome! I could spend the whole day sliding on those sliding boards! They go_ upside down!_ And loop-de-loop! Just like an amusement park, except it's like what if you combined a roller coaster and a log flume and you were just doing it on your own rump instead of in a log and there are _fish_ in the pool! And Rarity was showing off a whole bunch of new bathing suits and Fluttershy brought all her animals after lunch but she just left to put them to bed and Discord asked me to throw a party at nighttime because during the day it was just everyone having fun at a pool but it wasn't a _party_, and I couldn't throw a party because I was working because we had food vending and the Cakes had a booth, although I did take some breaks to go swimming, but now it's night so I'm throwing a nighttime pool party and everypony's invited! Though the foals have to go home before midnight 'cause it's a school night and besides that's when we're going to break out Applejack's really _good_ cider if you know what I mean—"

Despite Twilight's best attempts to pull free of Pinkie, she was completely unable to stop the hyperactive earth pony from dragging her to the edge of the pool. At that point Twilight balked, pulling herself loose from Pinkie's grip and going back onto the stability of four feet again. "Pinkie, I just came here to investigate, not to go swimming. Also to talk to Discord, although I guess he's here somewhere."

"Last I saw he was in the middle of the pool lying on his giant floating rock. I don't know why he wants a rock! I told him an inner tube would be more comfortable but he said he's part reptile so he wants to sun himself on a rock and I said but the sun isn't even up anymore and you can't get a tan from those mini-suns he put up there and he said yes but the rock is warm and the inner tube would be chilly! But I think he could make a warm inner tube if he wanted to but he decided he wanted a sun-warmed rock so he's just making it float in the middle of the pool except actually it looks like he's not there."

At this point, someone shoved Twilight's rump, hard, and she skidded forward. She had time to note that the ground was impossibly slippery even for wet concrete – she was sliding forward as if it were ice, or glass – and then she pitched forward into the pool with a shriek.

As she came up, spluttering, she saw Pinkie Pie yelling at Discord, who was standing there with sunglasses and a brightly colored short-sleeved buttondown shirt on. "...not nice at all! If you're gonna push someone into a pool the least you could do was jump in after them so you're all in the pool together, otherwise it's just mean!"

"Oh? Is that how it works?"

"Yes, it is!" Pinkie declared.

"Well then." Discord grabbed Pinkie in his mismatched arms, leapt into the air yelling "CANNONBALL!", rolled himself into an actual ball in mid-air with a shrieking Pinkie in the center of the ball, and landed next to Twilight in the water before she had a chance to swim, duck, or teleport away. What appeared to be half the pool splashed over her head from the weight of a ball-shaped draconequus hitting it.

Pinkie and Discord came up from under water just about at the time Twilight had managed to wipe enough of the water out of her face to see. "That was _awesome!_" Pinkie was yelling, waving her forelimbs wildly. "Let's do it again!"

"Naah, I hate repeating myself." He smirked at Twilight. "Do enjoy the water, Sparky."

"I came here to _talk_ to you, you big jerk!" Twilight spluttered. "Because you asked me for a _favor_!"

"And so I gave you the opportunity to come swim in my swimming pool! One day only, open to all ponies and anything else that agrees not to eat ponies while here, disappears at dawn so pool party hard while you can!"

"I did not come here to go _swimming_," Twilight snapped.

"Whyever else would you come to a pool party?"

"It could have been for cake!" Pinkie Pie said. "Twilight, did you want some cake? Because we've got some really awesome cakes up there! Also we have nachos and dip and there's a _ton_ of apple stuff and cheese and you need to try the pretzels! And we did have mariachi cherries, but they're all eaten now."

"No, I came to talk to Discord," Twilight said, climbing out of the pool. "I'm guessing there is no point to asking why there is a swimming pool in the middle of Mane Street."

"Oh my gosh, Twilight, we thought you knew! Discord said you weren't here because you were busy researching something but I thought you _knew_ about the pool and you'd just decided not to come but if you didn't even know about it and you spent the whole day doing research when you could have been at a pool! I am so sorry! I should have told you!" She grabbed Discord's beard, dragging his head down to her level. "YOU! You let us think Twilight already knew!"

"What are you blaming _me_ for? Spike showed up in the afternoon and he could have gone and told her."

Twilight facehooved. "He did. He said there was a swimming pool and he was going to go because we'd already been working all day and he thought Pinkie might be having a party, except I was deep in an ancient text in an unusual dialect of Equestrian that was hard to translate so I wasn't paying any attention and I forgot. I didn't realize it was Discord's swimming pool, though."

Pinkie released Discord's beard. "Ok, mister, but I have my eye on you."

Discord smirked down at her. "Do you really expect me to run with such an incredibly obvious joke?"

"I was actually hoping _not_ because it's rude to take people's body parts without permission even when it is really really funny because it's also sort of gross. Fluttershy told me about you stealing her nose and yes, I can picture that in my head and I bet it was the funniest thing ever, but you still shouldn't have done it because it's more funny-mean than funny-fun unless she was okay with you doing that. I mean, ponies are kind of _attached_ to our noses."

There was a quick drumbeat riff and a cymbal crash. "Oh, come on, Discord," Pinkie said, rolling her eyes. "I don't actually _need_ a sound effect for my jokes!"

"For a joke as terrible as that one, you needed all the help you could get," Discord said. "But now I fear I must have an incredibly dull conversation with Sparky here about her tedious research topics, so why don't you go stop Berry from getting into the good stuff this early in the evening? The Apples seem to have actually let their manes down to do some swimming, which is marvelous but it does mean no one's guarding the cider."

"Oh, yeah, I guess I better do that! Twilight, I'll see you around! Try the snacks, they're great!" With this, Pinkie swam off at improbable speed.

"My tedious research topics that _you_ more or less begged me to look into?" Twilight said.

"Well, if I'd implied they were interesting, Pinkie might not have chosen to leave so easily. She's going to come back and demand you have some fun, you know. To be honest, this isn't a good time for this discussion."

"You seemed to think it was a pretty high priority."

"It is." Discord snapped his talon. Suddenly they were in the library, Twilight was dry, and the moon was much higher in the sky. Discord was dripping all over the floor, though.

Twilight restrained her first impulse, which was to complain about Discord being soaking wet all over her library, and went to the window instead. From the position of the moon and stars, it was very, very late at night. "What did you just do?"

"I jumped us to a more appropriate time. Don't worry, I'll take us back when we're done. But I don't like to mix partying with unpleasantness, so I've taken us to the day before yesterday... or rather, the night before yesternight."

"Wait, so am I here already?"

"Asleep in bed, yes. You're not going to wake up and see yourself. I've stopped time again." He sat down on one of the chairs, which suddenly transformed from being a tiny wooden chair to a large plush armchair. "Give it to me straight, doctor, will I ever play the violin again?"

Twilight sighed. "You want the good news or the bad news first?"

Discord considered. "Good news. I am definitely a proponent of eating dessert first."

"Mostly everyone seems to have forgotten you."

Discord's mismatched eyes widened ludicrously. "That's _good_ news?"

"It is when you don't want the ponies who remember you to kill you," Twilight said. "Right now, general public opinion of you is that you are annoying but mostly harmless. The Preakers down in Baltimare were calling for your head for turning Pimlico into a beach, but after Fluttershy got you to shrink it down to an inner sand track paralleling the main track, they're actually pretty grateful. Apparently you're right, running on sand _is_ good leg training." Earth ponies held an annual race in Baltimare every spring, and the racers, called Preakers, would train on the track year round. Discord had originally turned the track into a sandy beach on the bay, never mind that the track was actually nowhere near the bay, claiming that it would be helpful on the grounds that ponies who trained on sand would be much stronger and faster on packed dirt than ponies who trained on packed dirt. This had not endeared him any to the Preakers, but once he'd turned it back into their race track and gifted them an inner sand track in place of his beach, now his popularity in Baltimare was surprisingly high. Possibly because he visited them rarely. "Ponyville parents still believe they should advise their children not to play with you or take candy from you, but stunts like the cheese fest last week or I guess like your swimming pool today have gone a long way to gaining you forgiveness for your chaos outbreak last year. Cloudsdale did _not_ appreciate the tornado, and no one but foals are happy about the snowstorm that closed the schools last week, but apparently pegasus foals really enjoy training on the occasional cotton candy clouds you toss up, and their parents appreciate _that_, at least."

Discord smirked. "Why, it sounds as if I'm becoming quite popular."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far. In Canterlot they're still highly suspicious of you, and your frequent meetings zxwith Princess Luna are both helpful and harmful; most ponies think better of you for being on good terms with at least one of our princesses, but some are concerned you're corrupting her back into being Nightmare Moon."

"We're actually just pointing and laughing at really absurd dreams ponies have."

Twilight found that difficult to believe. Well, not that Discord would point and laugh at absurd dreams, but that Luna would join in. "However, everypony's seen Celestia tolerate you, and that does help. There are some bizarre rumors that you and the Princess have a _thing_, which is just weird."

"A _thing_, Twilight?"

"You know. A _thing_ thing. Like a romantic thing?"

"Ohoho. Bizarre indeed! Hmm." Discord stroked his beard. "I wonder if that could be because of the wedding invitations I sent?"

If Twilight had been drinking anything she would have spluttered. "_Wedding_ invitations?"

"Yes, the ones inviting everypony to my wedding to Celestia! That could possibly be the basis of the rumors, do you think?"

This had to be a joke. "When was that?"

"Oh, twelve hundred years ago? Who can keep track?"

A horrible suspicion was poking at Twilight's head. "You didn't... you and the Princess aren't... _really_ married, are you?"

Discord made an exaggerated expression of distaste. "_Sparky._ Didn't you ever notice that commitment is a term we use for locking up the crazy ponies in the happy house? Do you _seriously_ believe I'd ever marry anyone?" He folded his forelimbs behind his back, clasping his paw in his talon with an expression of innocence as exaggerated as the expression of distaste had been. "My advisors were pressuring me to legitimize my reign with a political marriage. Why, I _had_ to send out those invitations or they'd have pestered me _endlessly._ Fortunately, the wedding was canceled on account of a sudden oobleck storm."

This was a setup, but Twilight had to ask, "What's oobleck?"

"You mean you don't know what oobleck is?" Discord asked her, eyes wide.

"No, I don't know—"

Abruptly a large quantity of sticky green slime fell out of nowhere and poured all over Twilight. Discord howled with laughter. "_That's_ oobleck!"

Twilight scowled, wishing she had the ability to fire bolts of destructive magic from her eyes, and also that the bolts of destructive magic she really did have the ability to fire from her horn were likely to do anything whatsoever to Discord. "Are you done being completely foalish now?" She couldn't pull her hooves free of the sticky gunk. Great.

"Fine, fine. Be a spoilsport." He snapped his talon and made the oobleck vanish. "So who else loves me?"

"That's pretty much what I've got for right now. It doesn't appear, from any modern references, that anypony who's come to know you since you first broke out of the stone wants you dead."

"Delightful."

"That doesn't mean it can't happen. Everypony knows you're impossible to harm without the Elements. If somepony in Ponyville _did_ want you dead for something awful you did the day you broke free, they'd most likely assume it to be impossible, and not talk about it or pursue it. If they then found out you were powerless..."

"Then I'd still be three times their size and significantly stronger." He considered. "But ugh, fitting into rooms if I didn't have my powers to reshape perspective would _not_ be fun. Maybe I should consider being a pony?"

"Well, there'd be pros and cons," Twilight said. "No one would recognize you, but you would have no experience at all with the true body of a pony... shapeshifting spells only go so far. Should I be assuming that this is something you think might happen to you slowly over time, or all of a sudden? And if it happens suddenly do you expect advance warning?"

He sighed. "I'm actually hoping it doesn't happen at all. This is just a contingency, Twilight. But it sounds like it might be workable, if worst comes to worst. If no one hates me all that much—"

"I didn't say that. Remember I said good news and bad news?"

Discord sank back into his chair. "Oh. Right." He took a deep breath. "All right then, what's the bad news?"

"Well, the good news is that the bad news isn't all that bad. I searched ancient texts looking for references to any long-lived creatures or wholly supernatural creatures that might be holding a grudge against you. First one I found was a reference to a dragon named, uh, Horsefeathers."

Discord burst out laughing. "Good old Horsefeathers! I remember that guy. What'd he do, swear eternal vengeance on me?"

"Yes, actually." She blinked at Discord. "Why is a dragon named Horsefeathers?"

"Oh, it wasn't. It was something fancy-schmancy like Smeathor or Alguin or something like that. Horsefeathers was what everyone started calling him after I turned his wings into pegasus wings."

"...Why?"

"Well, isn't it obvious? Really, Twilight. Horsefeathers because his wings are covered with feathers like a pegasus! Did I really need—"

"No, why did you turn his wings into pegasus wings?"

"See, it was all part of an important educational initiative I was promoting in dragon lands, called 'If It's Powerful Enough To Turn You Into A Fish, For The Sake Of All You Hold Holy Don't Start Insulting It For Being a Chimera.'"

"You gave him pegasus wings because he insulted you."

"It was for the honor of _all_ chimeras everywhere. He was just a bigot."

"You got mad at a dragon for insulting your looks so you gave him pegasus wings. Can a dragon even _fly_ with those?"

"With a little magical assistance, certainly. And I didn't get mad at him for insulting my looks. If you must know, the thing that irritated me was that he wasn't taking me seriously. I mean, it's perfectly all right to look at me and shriek, 'Help! A monster!' and throw things at me, but to stare a god in the face and insult him for having an unusual appearance? It _really_ takes some arrogance to pull that one off. He honestly thought that expressing his opinion was more important than not irritating the omnipotent being." Discord grinned. "Good old Horsefeathers. I'd forgotten about him. Is he even still alive?"

"Fifty years ago a dragon called Horsefeathers published a book about the magical weaponry of Equestria and the dragon lands, so... quite possibly. Who else would have a name like that?"

"Interesting. Probably not a serious threat, though. Any others?"

"Another dragon, Etain Basilica, is reported as wanting to personally turn you into stone. Legend has it she helped the Princesses in their quest to find the Elements of Harmony."

"Etain Basilica was the creator of the basilisks. Rather powerful mage, that one. But no sense of humor."

"What did you do to _her?_"

"Oh, nothing much." He stood up, and spoke in a dragon-accented variation of the Canterlot Royal voice. "WE ARE ETAIN BASILICA, DRAGON OF THE WEST, ANCIENT OF DAYS! LOOK UPON OUR WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR! Hey, did someone just change the color of my scales and ruff so I look like I'm wearing pony clown makeup and a poofy red wig? INFIDEL! YOU MAKE ETAIN BASILICA LOOK LIKE AN EVEN BIGGER IDIOT THAN THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT YET BECAUSE THIS WAS ELEVEN HUNDRED YEARS AGO! I SHALL DESTROY YOU! _Eeeek! _Mice! Mice living in my ruff!"

"You made the inventor of the basilisk look like a clown and put mice in her ruff?"

"_I_ was heroically protecting Equestria from the mad dragon's evil plans for world domination."

"With _clown makeup?_"

"There are two ways to intimidate your enemies, Twilight. Demonstrate your ability to do something awful to them by doing something awful to them, or to someone else so you show off your capability. Or do something that makes them look like a fool, while at the same time demonstrating that you _could_ have done an awful thing, if you hadn't mercifully decided to make fun of them instead of replacing their heart with a baked potato." He stroked his beard. "What was that recipe again? Oh, right, basilisk paprikash. Delicious. Probably not safe for ponies to eat, but dragons do love meat."

"Basilisk paprikash?"

"For some reason it was the cooking her little creations in a delicious spicy stew and serving them to her as a peace offering to apologize for the clown makeup that _really_ set her off. She'd made pets of those things." He shuddered. "_Nasty_ creatures. And I thought so _before_ I spent centuries being turned to stone."

"You made her a stew of her pets and made her eat it?"

"I didn't _make_ her eat it. She tucked right in! And why do you keep repeating my stories back to me? I can't _stand_ repetition."

"Is that why she swore to destroy you?"

"No, that's why she threw everything in her magical arsenal at me then and there. I think the swearing to find a way to destroy me happened after I turned her into rubber and dropped her from the stratosphere. I think she was bouncing across the landscape for _days._" He chuckled. "The rubberization wore off after the bouncing stopped, of course, I don't _permanently_ transform intelligent creatures into anything that can't move its own body parts. Is _she_ still alive?"

"Rumors suggest... maybe?"

Discord sighed. "Well, that would be less than pleasant, but she's two thousand years old. Even for a dragon with a lot of magical experience, that's getting on in years. I'm sure if someone came up to her and said 'Hey, did you know Discord's living in Ponyville?' she'd probably respond with 'WHAT'S THAT SONNY? PULL THIS CORD FOR SOME VAUDEVILLE? I LIKED THE SHOWS IN THE OLD DAYS WHEN WE MADE PONIES DANCE BEFORE WE ATE THEM! THESE MODERN PERFORMANCES ARE JUST AWFUL!'"

"Did dragons really do that?"

"Did dragons really kidnap ponies to be their slaves, demand entertainment from them, and then eat the ones who weren't sufficiently entertaining or obedient? Yes, they did. Until Celestia sat them at high noon for three weeks. And I bounced Etain Basilica off the landscape. Oh, and who else, that's right, Borgorath! What a war monger he was. Had the oddest phobia of drowning. I imagine he must have gotten over that eventually after I turned him into a sea serpent." Discord smiled with way too many teeth. "For some reason they respected the borders of Equestria after that, and stopped taking slaves."

"I haven't seen any references to Borgorath."

"You wouldn't. He got eaten by sharks about two centuries after I made him a sea serpent."

"Well, those are the two major ones I've found who appear to possibly still be alive. Most of everything else I've found is just rumor or legend or obvious tall tales, like the pony with all its organs on the outside of its body."

Discord went very still. "The what?"

"It's a legend. There's supposed to be a necromancer called the Horrorse, with all his organs on the outside of his body, and either he steals children to feed them to you, or he steals children to feed them to Nightmare Moon, and in one version of the legend he says he was a Chaos worshipper who was so evil _you_ banished him to Tartarus, or possibly to the realm of the spirits, and now he walks the world in eternal pain and devours the souls of living ponies and he cannot rest until he destroys the god he once worshipped, which apparently was you. Kids tell each other the Nightmare Moon version of the story on Nightmare Night, but the older books all have the version where it involved you. The legend that he was a Chaos worshipper actually only appears in fiction, but it appears in two different fictions by two different authors, so unless they were plagiarizing each other they were probably both drawing from the same oral myth of the time period." Twilight looked up from her scroll, observing Discord's rigid posture, his eyes staring into nothing, for the first time. "Discord? Are you all right?"

"Why is that legend an obvious tall tale, Twilight?" Discord asked, not looking at her. "A lot of myths and legends revolve around things that really happened. How do you know about this one?"

"I don't know for _certain_, but it's illogical and ridiculous and obviously just intended to be creepy. I mean, a pony with all his organs on the outside? How could he live? And if he worshipped you why would you have killed him or sent him to Tartarus? Plus these stories were written as if they were contemporary, but six hundred years apart. How could anypony but an alicorn live _that_ long?"

"It's just a legend," Discord said, but he was breathing slightly harder and his voice was slightly higher pitched. "As you say. Just a creepy story to frighten foals on Nightmare Night. Nothing else."

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "Discord, you're not acting like it's just a legend."

"It has to be. I... I killed them all. I... the same day Silver Eyes asked me to. I sent them into nothingness. None of them could have possibly come back."

"Discord, are you saying the Horrorse is _real_?"

"Was real," Discord said distantly. "Until Silver Eyes asked me to release them."

"Who was Silver Eyes?"

For the first time in several minutes Discord focused on Twilight. "Your ancestor."

"_Me?_"

"No, the ancestor of the _other_ Twilight Sparkle in this room." He sighed. "She had her own daughter after I was already locked in stone, so I never met the child you descend from. Silver Eyes was... a story for a different time. So! Anything else?"

"Is this thing actually something we need to worry about, Discord?"

"No. Probably not. I mean, there isn't any way. I destroyed them all. Only another god could have brought one back, and..." He trailed off.

"And what?"

"And nothing! There's no reason to believe anypony would have interfered with Equestria while I was... restrained from involving myself here. No reason at all. None."

"Discord..."

"It's just a _story_, Twilight. When I kill things, they stay dead."

"You've said you don't kill ponies."

"I don't kill ponies for fun, because killing things isn't any fun. What's less chaotic than death? Only living things can get up and move around and _do_ things."

"Actually, death is the ultimate chaos. Entropy is the destruction of information," Twilight said, "and an increase in disorder. When the order that allows life to exist is disrupted, that's when death happens, so isn't death inherently chaotic?"

"You're confusing chaos with entropy, my dear."

"They're synonyms."

"So says the little unicorn to the _god_ of chaos. Trust me, I think I know what I am talking about."

"But entropy is a decrease in order! And chaos—"

"Is not a decrease in anything. _Order_ is a decrease in _chaos_. Entropy results in stasis. All things come to equilibrium. You know, the moon is very peaceful. Very harmonious. No pesky life forms to interrupt the cool perfection of the moon, not now that Luna's back down here anyway. Everything on the moon is a rock. Very orderly." Discord was pacing. "Everypony makes this mistake and I'm tired of it. Chaos comes _first_. Chaos is plenipotentiality. No rules, nothing's stable, but the possibilities are endless. Then order imposes rules, and lines, and laws, and well I suppose _some_ of them are all right, like gravity occasionally, but why does it have to _always_ be on? What's wrong with a little variety? But chaos is potential. Order is realized, expended potential. Entropy... is nothing. It's decay." He leaned down into her face. "Entropy is a decrease in _energy!_ Not order! It takes energy to maintain order, but not nearly as much as it takes to maintain chaos. _Everything_ comes from chaos!"

"So... it takes energy to maintain order, so a decrease in energy causes a decrease in order, thus, chaos. How is that not how it works?"

"Argh!" The draconequus yanked at his horns in frustration. "It doesn't work like that because it _doesn't work like that._ There are _three_ states. Chaos, order, and entropy. Look here." He snapped his finger and there were buckets of paint all over the floor of the library. He picked one up and swung it at a rack of books. "Whee!"

"Discord! Stop it! You—you're creating a temporal paradox _and_ you're RUINING THE BOOKS!"

"Glad to see you've got your priorities straight," Discord said. "But I'm not doing either, because reasons. Wait and watch!" He sploshed another can of paint onto the floor. "Chaos! All the colors, in potential. They can be anything! There are no rules constraining them, no reason you can't have green and blue and chartreuse all mixed together in giant blobs. Every possibility is here!"

He then handed Twilight a glowing paintbrush. "Okay, avatar of order, strut your stuff."

"What?"

"Make something out of the paint. You don't like giant blobs of paint all over the floor and the books, do you?"

Twilight discovered that the paintbrush was magic – when she channeled just a tiny amount of her own magic through it to activate it, she could point it at the paint and make the paint take the form of any picture she could visualize. She couldn't get rid of the paint, but she could at least make it look like _something_. She painted Spike and Princess Luna, since the colors Discord had tossed on the floor were various shades of green, purple and blue.

"There we go. That's order. First we had beautiful chaos that could possibly be anything whatsoever. Then we have orderly paintings, which are paintings. They'll never not be paintings. You can't take that paint back and make something else with it; order has structured the paint and now it will never be anything other than that painting."

He snapped his talon. The paint started to crack and peel. "Until it becomes nothing."

A wind blew in the library. The paint faded, and the wind got at the cracks, pulling peeling sections off, until in a few minutes there was nothing but dust. "And that's entropy. The disorder that follows the energy running out isn't chaos. Chaos can be anything. Entropy... can only be nothing." He sat back down in his chair. "And that is why I don't kill ponies unless they really, really, really need to die."

"And how do you define ponies really needing to die?"

"Murdering your daughter to sacrifice her to a god of chaos counts. Especially if said god of chaos emphatically _does not want_ ponies to be sacrificed, to him or to any other god."

Twilight had to acknowledge that if there was ever any good reason to kill a pony, that sounded like it. She sighed. "I still think you're using those terms wrong."

"I still think that if mere mortals get into a dispute with the spirit of chaos over what the terms chaos and entropy mean, only an idiot agrees with the _mortals_."

"Well, I guess you have a point." Something he said clicked. "Wait, did the Horrorse sacrifice his daughter to you? Is that why you killed him?"

Discord looked at Twilight with eyes that were suddenly very cold and hard. "Yes and no," he said, and there was for once no joking in his tone. "There were six, and they sacrificed seven. Silver Eyes was the only unicorn out of the foals they killed, the daughter of two of the cultists. And I didn't kill them... _then_. I'd planned to give them eternal life, actually, but Silver Eyes asked me to release them."

"Wait, you just said Silver Eyes... didn't you just say they sacrificed her?"

"They did. She got better." He closed his eyes. "Chaos opposes entropy as much as it does order. It's the natural way of things for ponies to die and stay dead, but I really didn't think that was fair. She was just a filly. There was so much chaos left for her to create! So many pranks and messy rooms and broken hearts and shattered paradigms she had yet to produce in her lifetime, so much candy to eat and broccoli to refuse and broken curfews and stolen road signs and, given her level of power, absurd magical mishaps. So I fixed it. And her six friends, but they weren't unicorns. They just went off and lived their earth pony and pegasus lives. Silver Eyes became a mage, so she... lived a long time."

"I didn't know you could bring the dead to life," Twilight said, feeling slightly cold. She knew Discord was powerful... but _that_ powerful?

"I can do lots of things, Twilight. Most of the things I don't do, it's because I choose not to, not because I can't. However, for the record, I cannot make a rock so heavy I can't lift it. Believe me, I've tried."

"So... if you saved the children who was sacrificed... why would you have wanted to give the cultists eternal life? I don't understand."

Discord smiled. It was perhaps the most terrifying smile she had ever seen on his face. "What was that description you gave of the Horrorse again, Sparky?"

"He's a necromancer with... his organs on the outside..." It clicked finally. "Oh Celestia."

"Celestia had nothing to do with it, she begged me to just let them die. But she wasn't the one they tortured to death. Silver Eyes was. So when _she_ asked me for mercy for them... I dispersed them into nothingness. So you see they cannot possibly still be around looking for me. I _disintegrated_ them. And the only magic that was keeping them alive after I inverted them was mine, anyway."

"You're evil," she whispered, thinking of ponies with their skin turned inside out and all their organs on the outside of their bodies, in perpetual agony, unable to die. Yes, a pony who could sacrifice a foal to a Chaos God deserved death, probably. At least, Twilight would have understood executing them. But nopony deserved _that_.

"Sometimes, Twilight. Sometimes I am, yes." For the first time, ever, he looked to her old and exhausted, a creature worn down by his own past.

And then he took a deep breath and looked back up at her, face animated and mismatched eyes wide and cheery again. "So! Is that all of them? The entire We Hate Discord Forever club roster, as far as you know?"

"Not exactly. The nation of Sibearia has been rattling sabers, threatening Princess Celestia that since she released you, they may release Bearba Yaga."

"Oh, do the bears _really_ think I'm gonna mess with them worse than she would? Have they forgotten my treaty with Koschei so soon?"

"You actually made a treaty with Koschei the Deathless?"

"I was, technically, considered the ruler of Equestria for nearly a thousand years."

"Yeah, but I have a hard time imagining you doing something as _orderly_ as signing a treaty."

"Well, it wasn't so much a treaty as we got drunk together and agreed not to mess with each other's territory. Much." Discord shook his head. "Nopony has _ever_ drunk me under the table before. I know he's deathless, but sun and sky, so am _I_ and I've never seen any entity hold their liquor like that. Pretty sure we might have agreed to a whole lot of other things, too, but honestly neither of us remembered any of them, which is probably just was well because neither of us really wanted to know why he was sleeping on top of a flagpole with my underwear on his head."

Twilight reflexively rejected that image on the grounds that Discord didn't wear underwear and therefore it was just a joke and therefore she didn't have to break out the brain bleach. "Well, Koschei was deposed a hundred years ago by the Communursist Revolution, so they probably don't think you consider yourself bound by the treaty anymore."

"They deposed him? Good for them! Did they find his heart or something?"

"I don't know very much about the bear nations. I know there used to be three of them, Sibearia, Bearussia and Bearalus, but now they're the Ursoviet Union. However, it's specifically Sibearia where Bearba Yaga is supposedly imprisoned under the ice, and they've threatened to release her to maintain the balance of power."

"That would be hilarious. Firstly because only in the mind of bears would Bearba Yaga ever be a match for me on her best day – I mean, ok, she's more powerful than an alicorn but only because she's a lot meaner – and secondly because she would cause so much wonderful, beautiful chaos _in_ the Ursoviet Union that I'm half tempted to go mess with them just so they do release her, except then Celestia will whine at me and who needs that. And you forgot the Urskraine, but don't worry, everyone else does too."

"So that's probably not going to happen, then?"

"It's not an issue. As long as I have my powers, Bearba Yaga's no match for me, and if I didn't, Sibearia would be fools to release her. And since bears can't talk in Equestria, it hardly seems likely that they'd send a team of assassins or something."

"Do you know why that is?"

"Why they might feel like they need the power of speech before they undertake a dangerous mission?"

"No, why bears are talking creatures in the rest of the world but they can't talk when they get to the borders of Equestria. I was talking with Harry the Bear – he makes paw gestures, Fluttershy says it's called sign language and she was translating – and he said he comes from Bearussia originally, and when he came to Equestria he lost the ability to talk, but he wanted to be here anyway because this is the home of the sun. I always thought it was because of different races, like the pony races; Equestria has the brown bears, most of the Ursoviet Union is black bears and polar bears so I thought possibly they talk and brown bears don't. But Harry's a brown bear. And what about Ursas?"

"Ursas can't talk because they are magical monsters, not fully sentient creatures. They're not actually related to bears, they just look that way. Rather like windigos were not actually related to ponies."

"Oh, that makes sense... but then why can't bears talk in Equestria?"

"Because bears never shut up otherwise."

Twilight blinked. "Discord... did you do something?"

He whistled, looking at the ceiling.

"Discord. Are you responsible for _taking speech_ away from _talking creatures?_ Do you know how awful that is?"

"No, I only lost the power of speech for years and years because I was a stone statue, obviously I can't imagine how horrible it must be to be able to walk around and eat and stretch and see the sights but not be able to talk except with your paws, that you can actually move around because you aren't made out of stone. Can't comprehend at all."

"Why did you deprive bears of the ability to talk in Equestria?"

"Because they'd have invaded otherwise. Bears are as social as ponies, and some of them have as much magic as any unicorn, but they're bigger, stronger and more carnivorous. Dragons can't get along with each other well enough to invade anyone usually and griffins have less magic than ponies, so when the griffins go to war with Equestria it's just hilarious because they're totally outclassed. They think, ooh, we're predators, we can defeat these little herbivores no problem, and then they get their tailfeathers kicked, and then two generations later they forget and start the whole thing over again. But bears have sufficient numbers and magical strength and ability to, bleah, _harmonize_ with each other that they can give ponies a run for their money, and they're omnivores so they're capable of savagery that puts anything a pony can muster to shame. Oh, and they don't care about Celestia's greatest weapon because they're used to going without sunlight for months at a time... and without nightfall for just as long. Anywhere else in the world, she can threaten to deny them the sun or keep it shining on them long enough to destroy them... the bears just laughed at her when she tried."

"Why do they go without the _night_ for months at a time? I know they hibernate so I figured that's how they go without sun... but even if you're awake at night, it's still night."

"I could tell you magic... but you're actually capable of comprehending the real explanation, except that I don't feel like teaching you basic astrophysics right now, so remind me one of these days. Or ask Celestia. The point is, the bears were dangerous. I was perfectly happy to let any _other_ creature invade Equestria so I could watch my little ponies kick some serious backside, because watching ponies fight is wonderfully entertaining. But if I'd let the bears invade Equestria they could possibly have _won_. So..." He shrugged. "Hard to organize an army when you can't talk, and no one wants to take territory they can't live in without losing speech. I might have taken the restriction off in a century or two except _somepony_ decided it was a good idea to turn me into a rock, and I don't trust the Communursists enough to take it down now." Discord stood up. "How about now, is that everyone?"

"There's only one other thing. I talked to Princess Cadence, because even though she wasn't around when you were controlling Equestria and she's not too much older than me, she's learned a lot of Equestrian history. She didn't know anything from Equestrian history, but she did say that the Changelings worship a Spirit of Love, who supposedly created them, and they believe you drove their goddess away from this world and that's why they have to steal love to feed instead of just feeling it. You were a statue at the time, so it didn't come up much, but she was trying to talk to them, to find out what they believe and what drives them, while she was a prisoner, and they told her that story. If they really do believe you drove their goddess away, they might have a grudge against you."

"I'm sorry, my mind goes blank anytime anyone mentions the Spirit of Sappiness. Can you actually tell me what the point you were making was?"

Twilight sighed heavily. "Changelings have a legend that you drove their goddess away from this world, and so they might have a grudge against you."

"_Now_ are we done?"

"Yes, that's everything my research was able to identify. As I said, it's not a huge number of potential enemies given how much trouble you've caused over the centuries, since a lot of beings who might have hated you from your past days probably died while you were still in stone. But it's enough that you probably need to be careful."

He nodded. "Thank you, Twilight Sparkle, you've been an _enormous_ help." He snapped his talon.

And Twilight suddenly found herself in midair above the deep end of the swimming pool.

"No, no, _NO!—"_ she shrieked as she fell, managing only to twist her body enough that when she plunged into the pool, it was mostly sort of face first and not a belly flop. She struggled frantically in the water for what felt like a very long time before finally managing to break the surface. Discord was floating in the air where he'd popped her back into reality, laughing uproariously.

Twilight shook the water out of her eyes as best she could, and glared upward. "DISCORD!"


End file.
